


Wolves in Ulthar

by Guede



Series: Of Werewolves and Tentacles [6]
Category: Cthulhu Mythos - Fandom, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alive Laura Hale, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And They Love Him Back, Belly Rubs, Cthulhu Mythos, Derek in Denial, Dom/sub Undertones, Dreams and Nightmares, Established Peter Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Humor, Incest, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Miscommunication, Multi, Pack Bonding, Pack Dynamics, Polyamory, Scott Loves Animals, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is John, Sourwolf Derek Hale, Tentacles, Werewolf Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-31
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-07 02:56:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 37,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11049843
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: Derek’s been having some weird dreams about his uncle and his uncle’s boyfriend.  Also, his old hometown is now an epicenter of cosmic horror weirdness (as opposed to just supernatural horror weirdness) and his family’s been driven out of their house yetagain, and nobody’s explaining why.  So the dreams really aren’t even close to a priority for him.Really.6/11/17:“Are you having sex back there?” Stiles snaps, stomping back into view.  He’s got cobwebs thickly layered over one of the hands he’s waving irritably at them, streaks of the gritty black dust that’s all over the place through his hair and on his clothes, and his phone is giving off a purple glow.  “I told you, this isnotgoing to be a porno, I really don’t care how much the tentacle-sex fetishists are offering, this isfield research.”





	1. Chapter 1

Derek doesn’t normally dream.

It’s not that he doesn’t dream at all—he tried that, and ended up with his sisters letting Peter drug him so he woke up strapped to a table in Deaton’s clinic, which didn’t really help with the whole got-possessed-lost-time trauma that had him refusing to sleep for a while. Even if yeah, they were kind of right that werewolves still need REM sleep, and being uncontrollably homicidal is just as bad when it’s coming from sleep deprivation as when it’s coming from an ancient evil spirit who used to be stuck in the Nemeton. He still thinks they could’ve…well, _not_ let Peter get involved. Laura could’ve just punched him out or something like that.

Anyway, he dreams. Just not often. And these days it’s not even because he’s using magic or shady versions of wolfsbane, he just…doesn’t really do dreaming. He’s not sure whether that’s because his mind’s finally figured out that dreaming is a great way to make him wake up in a wrecked bed and cut short a good night’s sleep, or because he finally moved somewhere where nothing really happens that’s worth dreaming about, but it works pretty well for him so he’s not that interested in questioning it.

Except right now, he is. In his dream. Which he knows is a dream because he’s staring at his uncle’s boyfriend happily puttering around in a graveyard, while completely naked. The graveyard thing is _sort_ of realistic, though Stiles has rolled his eyes enough times and lectured Derek to death about how the whole point of the Great Old Ones is that they are liminal not-dead whatever so ‘graveyard’ isn’t an accurate term blah blah blah. The guy still spends an awful lot of time outside around corpses, is all Derek’s going to say.

Naked is…kind of less realistic, even if Stiles and Peter are way too willing to engage in heavy petting in front of people who didn’t ask for that. When Stiles is doing research, he gets incredibly anal-retentive about having the proper protective magic and gear, to the point that it kind of makes Derek miss Scott’s habit of randomly throwing himself into whatever Deaton or Peter just said is dangerously fragile. And then there’s the whole thing where Stiles has a _tail_ , which is just. Something.

“Well, for ‘something,’ you seem quite intrigued by it,” drawls a familiar voice, and Derek’s about to growl at Peter when the cat on the tombstone stands up, arches into a stretch, and flicks its tongue out in a cartoonishly smug way. “Oh, don’t play the ingenue, nephew. Your own sister occasionally has one.”

Derek makes a face at the…at it, then turns away before he gets too deep into why Peter and why his dream, and now Stiles is frolicking. Naked. With a tail.

There’s really no other word for it. Stiles is jumping and trotting and doing somersaults between the grave markers, a big grin on his face, exactly like a—yeah, Derek will say it, like a dog. He even stops and chases that tail at one point, and the tail is doglike too, long and thin and whippy. When he finally catches it, he pinches the middle between his knees and grabs the top with his hands and falls over onto his side, still grinning, and starts to rub it against his belly.

“He’s not talking,” Derek mutters to himself, finally placing what’s the weirdest thing about the whole scene. 

“Isn’t that what you usually want?” the Peter-cat says, just before pressing up against Derek’s leg.

Derek snarls and hops away—Peter-cat grins and he’s normal housecat size but his grin is way too wide—and promptly runs up against a tombstone. He curses and catches himself against it, then pulls himself up just in time to see Stiles. Rubbing. Naked. Right. Also looking way too happy about it.

Just because Derek’s a werewolf doesn’t mean he’s attracted to animals, or anything animal-shaped, and the sight of that tail twitching around Stiles’ erect and rapidly-reddening cock really doesn’t do anything for Derek. It honestly doesn’t. But he keep staring because…because he doesn’t know. Because Stiles is surprisingly fit under the thrift-shop clothes and academic background, with appealingly lean thighs and a longish neck that, okay, yeah, there’s some wolf coloring how attractive Derek finds that. 

But tail. And rolling around in graveyard dirt, and that goddamn cat is snickering next to Derek. “You look as if you’ve just cracked puberty all over again, Derek,” it purrs at him, stalking primly forward when he irritably kicks a clod of dirt at it. “Don’t be ashamed, you’re hardly the only one to have an epiphany later in life.”

“You talking about how you decided a guy who actively _looks_ for evil tentacle aliens is the love of your life?” Derek mutters.

The Peter-cat draws itself up into a prissy sitting position, then lifts its paw and starts to chew at the claws. “No need to be jealous,” it says. “He’s offered enough times to teach you the chants too, but if you can’t commit to the accent, there’s no point in getting your mind devoured. What there is to devour, at any rate.”

“Peter, do you really have to—” Derek starts, turning on his heel.

In the back of his head, he still remembers it’s a dream, and even if it was real, arguing with a talking cat is _stupid_ when he’s a were _wolf_ and then the Peter-cat jerks its head up, its eyes widening, and Derek whirls around with his claws out and—

“Goddamn it,” Derek says after a second. Bolt upright in bed, staring at the far wall. It’s the middle of the night and he’s awake.

Something thumps and he jumps, and is halfway out of the bed—at least that’s still in one piece—when the door suddenly swings open. “…better not have just popped out the window again, left his phone while he went hunting rabbits or what—hey!” Stiles snaps his head up and hastily shakes his irritated expression into a polite one. It’s not that convincing. “Hey. Derek. So. You, uh, you planning to answer that? ‘cause if it’s a stalker or something like that, and your ‘block’ function is broken, I could take a look or stick your phone in the toilet bowl or—”

Derek frowns at the man, then looks over at the bedside table as his phone rings. He reaches out and picks it up, then grimaces as he looks at the push notifications listing all the recent missed calls on his screen. Then looks again. “Why’s Laura’s calling?”

“For God’s sake, just talk to her,” Peter snaps, pushing past Stiles into the room. He’s over by the bed and holding Derek’s phone before Derek can do more than pop his claws, and then he puts it up to his ear. “Yes? No, Derek’s here, he’s just being exceptionally antisocial. Which given the time, I’d also accuse you of, since you don’t usually—what?”

“What’s up?” Stiles asks, leaning against the door. He still smells annoyed, but his expression’s mostly curious with a touch of concern. He’s also…not naked, but that’s Peter’s shirt he’s thrown on.

Peter’s bare-chested, and now that Derek’s thinking about what he’s smelling, reeks of frustrated arousal. His uncle rakes the hair back from his face, then presses the heel of his hand into his brow, sighing heavily, and as he twists around, the light from the hallway picks out a sticky-looking patch at his waist and disappearing into his boxers.

“Your sister says that the basement has three-headed frogs in it,” he says, as if somehow, this is Derek’s fault. Then he tosses the phone at Derek and about-faces towards the hall.

“Mutant frogs? No tentacles?” Stiles says, pricking alert, and Peter slows down and the frustration in his scent goes down by half.

“No tentacles, but she called your father over to check just in case,” Peter says. He stops and cocks his head at Stiles. “There’s also the matter of how the basement flooded in the first place, when it hasn’t rained in a week and all the plumbing is still intact.”

Derek catches the phone and puts it to his ear, but Laura’s already hung up, and he was still too thrown from the dream to listen in on her and Peter’s conversation. “Wait, what? Our basement is flooded?”

“Huh, spontaneous appearance of water. I don’t think there’s a Deep One delegation anywhere in the state this month, but…nope, can’t be that,” Stiles says, peering at his phone. He doesn’t seem to notice how Peter’s sidled up and is nuzzling at his cheek instead of trying to see the screen. “Wouldn’t rule out just some upstream activity in the water table, but three-headed frogs could mean mating season for…I’m pretty sure we finished first.”

Or maybe he has, with the suspicious side-eye he’s giving Peter. Who shrugs and twists around so he can nose towards Stiles’ shirt-collar and Derek barely averts his eyes in time, then hisses and averts them again as he accidentally spots Peter’s hand working into Stiles’ pajama bottoms.

“ _Did_ we?” Peter murmurs.

“Peter, your ability to orgasm mid-my nephew is an inconsiderate doofus snarl is the eighth wonder of—”

Derek calls Laura back. “Hey, I’m gonna come home if it’s bad,” he says. “I’ll see you in a couple hours. Tell Cora to get her stuff out of my room.”

* * *

“Because the basement is _flooded_ ,” Cora says to Derek three hours later, her arms folded over her chest, eyes trying to start a second roll when they’re only halfway through the first. “Nobody’s staying there right now, Derek, though if you want to have to squish a mutant frog every two minutes, be my guest.”

“They really are thick in there,” Scott says apologetically. He tucks a roll of heavy-duty plastic under his arm and then points to what looks like a box of those puffy white biohazard suits. “It was all we could do to keep them out of the bedrooms long enough to tape over all the doors and windows, and we still left traps just in case we missed any.”

Derek pinches the bridge of his nose. “So…you’re going back in to check the traps later? Because wouldn’t the frogs die if you don’t?”

If Scott’s there, so are Allison and her dad, and both of the Argents shoot Derek the kind of murderous look that he _thought_ a combination of Scott’s insistence on tolerance and Melissa McCall’s willingness to threaten assault charges had cured them of. Then Scott sighs and slouches unhappily, and Allison abandons that to go hug him from behind.

“I know, Scott, but we all discussed it, we can’t catch and release them anyway. They’re not native and Mr. Stilinski says it’s even worse if we have to file invasive species paperwork on top of potential cosmic mutagen paperwork,” Allison soothes.

“Yeah. Yeah, I know, it’s just…I know they have too many heads, but they seem like regular frogs besides that,” Scott mumbles, with a half-hearted smile at her. She hugs him tighter and tells him he’s a good person, and then, when he’s not looking, glares at Derek again.

“You can’t get into your room, bro, it’ll let out all the frogs,” Laura says, coming up to the group. She hits Derek on the side of his arm, then scruffs his neck while looking past him to the porch, where Stiles and his father are discussing some kind of test result with a hazmatted somebody from Miskatonic University’s San Francisco office. More hazmat suits are trundling in and out of the front door, carrying big, croaking boxes. “You’re just going to have to wait till they clean it out. But look, what did you need from there anyway? You didn’t have anything left except for some old school stuff.”

Cora rolls her eyes again. “Seriously. I don’t even know what’s the deal with me using it for storage, it’s not like you were.”

“Why do you even need storage?” Derek says, irritated. “Don’t you have five closets or something between your room and the place you and Erica and Boyd are renting now?”

“Children, really? Must we do this?” Peter interrupts, talking over Cora’s growl. 

He doesn’t want to be here. He wanted to _come_ , sure, he always wants to show up to mock them, and if it’s weird shit that Stiles wants to investigate, Peter will not only go, he’ll sabotage Derek’s car to make sure he gets to drive. But he doesn’t want to be _here_ , standing aimlessly around in the early morning fog after a late-night drive, while Stiles gets more and more involved in something on the hazmat suit’s tablet. He wants to be nice and warm with fancy coffee in whatever hotel he booked for them, with Stiles paying attention to him. It’s written all over the little bit of glow leaking into his eyes as he stares at the hazmat suit when the idiot leans too close to the back of Stiles’ neck.

“Don’t all the Miskatonic people know to _not_ tell Stiles that’s a great idea when he says he’s got a quick test in mind and it’ll just take two seconds to set up?” Laura mutters.

Chris Argent, of all people, puts his face into his hands. “I think that’s the new transfer grad student,” he mutters back. Then a soft chime makes him look up. He frowns, then pulls out his phone and peeks at it. “John says he’s going to send Stiles back to bed, nobody’s setting up testing till the place is cleared.”

At the same time, Stiles’ dad says very loudly and pointedly that protocol is containment first, and since there isn’t any immediate physical or astral threat, he really doesn’t see any need for a waiver here. The hazmat suit backs up, then hovers uncertainly as a disappointed-looking Stiles agrees, totally, Dad, protocol all the way but just one thing, he really thinks if he just took a look, just a _look_ , c’mon, he just wants to see.

Stiles’ dad doesn’t say anything, just levels an unimpressed stare at his son as Stiles rattles on with wider and wider hand-gestures. Then somebody huffs to Derek’s left and he turns to catch Peter going over to the car. Peter opens the trunk and ducks down to rummage in the bags, then pulls off his shirt while bent over. Then he pulls on another one.

“But it’s the same shirt,” Cora observes.

“Two sizes smaller,” Derek says, just as Peter straightens up.

The bottom of Peter’s shirt rides up a good inch above his waistband, and just when he turns, the flex of his muscles snaps a thread somewhere in the shirt seams. People get on Derek for, well, looking better than they do, but he was born like that and he just leaves it at that. He doesn’t go out front with it like Peter, smirking away as Stiles finally gives up and stomps down the steps and then trips at the bottom as he looks over at them.

“Oh, my God, it _works_ ,” Laura says. She doesn’t really make it clear whether she’s asking a question or criticizing or admiring.

“I’m not sure—” Scott starts, frowning.

“Hey, we were just going to head home for breakfast,” Allison says, stepping forward and pointedly tugging Scott with her. “So where are you guys staying? Did you have time to find a hotel room? Because if not—”

“Oh, right, I should’ve asked,” Scott says to Stiles. “Do any of you need the spare room?”

Stiles slows down, tucking his phone into his jeans pocket as he does. “No, Peter and I—” he stumbles again as Peter comes over, absently pulling at the too-short shirt “—um, no, we got a—I mean Dad said—”

Peter reaches out and steadies Stiles, and then leaves his hand on Stiles’ arm. “We’ll just stay in his father’s rental,” he says. “But it’s very generous of you to offer.”

“Yeah. I mean. With the way we go through clean sheets,” Stiles mutters under his breath. His eyes are glued to the strip of belly Peter’s showing, but they’re a little narrowed now, and the poke he gives Peter’s stomach isn’t exactly flirty. Not that that stops Peter from edging closer. “But nah, it’s cool, Dad says he’s going over to your mom’s place anyway so Peter and I might as well save you the laundry money. Since obviously that’s a priority right now.”

“Contamination is a leading cause of false positives, Stiles,” Peter says patiently. “And the best way to control it _is_ to properly segregate tasks.”

Derek is actually glad Chris clears his throat right then. Which is annoying, but at least then he can kind of ignore whatever Stiles is saying about tasks and proper control. “So where are you staying?” Chris asks him.

“Laura wants to just sleep in the car here so she knows when they’re done, but I’m just going back to my place,” Cora adds. “You could probably crash on the couch.”

“Are you going to make sure I don’t wake up to Erica staring at me?” Derek asks.

Cora shrugs. “I gotta sleep, Derek. So does Boyd.”

“Look, Dad’s rental is a three-bedroom, Derek can have an actual bed and a door that reliably locks,” Stiles says, coming back to the conversation. He still looks suspicious about Peter, but he’s got his hand tucked into the front pocket of Peter’s jeans. “Anyway, fine, let’s go drop things off and eat breakfast and _not_ let me start on fixing your frog infestation—”

“Nobody’s saying you can’t, your father and I both just think it might be better to wait till after you’ve gotten something to eat,” Peter says, soothing like he isn’t scooting Stiles towards the car. By pushing Stiles with his whole front, and smelling increasingly like Stiles isn’t the one with the hunger problem. “You know what happens when your blood sugar level—”

Stiles makes a face and does not segregate their bodies. “Okay, listen, just because I get my Aklo mixed up with my Tcho-Tcho doesn’t mean I’m gonna call down the King in Yellow, they dug in the permanent anti-summoning charms two months ago—”

“Watching that all the time is seriously better than Erica?” Cora says under her breath, looking at the two of them. “I mean, yay for distracting Peter without bloodshed or getting McCall’s mom down on us, but I feel like I’m about to find out what diabetes is like.”

“Scott, you wanna give sis here a ride back?” Laura says. When Cora shoots her a look, Laura spreads her shoulders slightly. Then holds it till Cora gives her a sarcastic hand-flip and reluctantly slides over to Scott. “I know it’s out of your way, but I’m staying and I need to keep my car.”

“No, we can take her. We should get going anyway, Mom’s going to want an update,” Scott says.

He didn’t look too happy about Cora’s comment either, but on the other hand, he’s also using the nasally tone of somebody trying not to breathe too much through his nose, and when Stiles spares a second to call that he’ll hit up Scott later for lunch, Scott awkwardly ducks behind Allison. There’s nothing wrong with those two, it’s just Scott obviously doesn’t want to see how far up the hem of Peter’s shirt has ridden.

Neither does Derek, but unfortunately, he doesn’t have Melissa McCall as an excuse to leave. He briefly debates going over to say hello to Stiles’ father and maybe growl at some of the Miskatonic hazmat suits—nothing personal, just reminding them that the ‘apport scene’ they’re chattering so excitedly about is somebody’s _house_ —but then Chris Argent gets in there first. And Chris is a lot more subtle than Stiles or Peter, but at the end of the day he still has a scent, and right now he smells like he is _very_ happy to be able to take Stiles’ dad aside.

“If you keep making that face, I’m gonna have to punch it to reset it. Just suck air through your mouth like the rest of us,” Laura says. But then she ruins any chance of Derek using her as a distraction by putting her hand on his shoulder and putting on the face she uses when she’s about to worrywart over him. “You good? Because look, I can’t leave yet, but if you’d rather, I could probably twist some arms and find you somewhere else to stay.”

Derek looks at her. “I thought Isaac was subletting his place.”

“Yeah, well, a hotel—”

“I’ve been staying with them for the last three months and I haven’t cut off my nose yet, I think I can deal,” Derek says. He glances over at the car, where Peter’s gotten behind the wheel but left the driver’s door open, and Stiles is not exactly in shotgun next to him. Then he glances away and thinks about the croaking frogs in his house, getting slime all over his family’s stuff. “I’ll go down the street and get Peter’s stupid coffee and by the time I get back, they should be done.”

Laura’s face says she completely believes that this plan will work, but also, that it’s still ultimately pointless. “Okay, sure, they’ll be done and then they’ll start over, from what I’ve seen.”

“Not when Stiles seriously wants to do research. Honestly, with how weird this is, he’ll probably lock Peter out for the whole rest of the day and I’ll just have to deal with Peter making me bring stuff to the couch for him.” Derek starts to shrug and then a yawn suddenly sneaks up on him. He ducks his head away but still ends up fending off Laura when she snorts and ruffles his hair. It was a long drive in, and Peter was behind the wheel, but it wasn’t long enough for him to figure out how to tune out Stiles’ constant hypothesizing about what was up with his family home. “Which I do know how to sleep through.”

“Well, fine, since you insist.” She gives him another hair-ruffle, with almost enough knuckle to convert it to a noogie—why both his sisters are so rough has nothing to do with them being werewolves and everything to do with them being two-on-one his whole life—and then settles back for another, harder-to-read look at him. “You’re really settling in over there.”

It’s been a whole three months and Derek still doesn’t know what’s wrong with the way he does laundry; he just knows that Peter won’t let him buy the detergent and every single time he finds a stain, he has to check the three-page color-code key Stiles pinned to the fridge for which stain remover to use, unless he wants random interdimensional entities to suddenly show up in the utility room. Which just ends in more weird stains.

“Anyway, I think this shouldn’t be too bad,” Laura says. She cocks her head, oddly hesitant—she’s not normally one to back off when she thinks Derek is being confusing, or a pain, or anything else that isn’t easy to deal with. 

“The frogs? Which turned our house into another supernatural hazard? _Again_?” Derek says.

Laura makes a face and lets out a slight subvocal growl, which is more like her. “But we actually have professionals on speed-dial, we don’t have to jerry-rig something ourselves, and we’re going to know exactly where Peter is for the next twenty-four hours. Look, for once I’d just like to be optimistic and hope we won’t get a surprise kick in the ass.”

True. “Okay,” Derek says.

She looks at him again, then pivots a little so she can wrap her arm over his shoulders. It’s awkward, and not just because she’s not in her usual boots and is kind of pulling herself up to squeeze him and press their cheeks together. They’re family and for all their arguing, they know each other better than anybody else—so they both know Laura isn’t really one for physical reassurance any more than Derek wanted to come back to Beacon Hills, even for family. She’d rather beat up somebody for him and that’s a big reason why he puts up with her poking into his life.

“Frogs, Derek,” she says, her nose wrinkling. “Weird, gross, and probably going to get more complicated before it’s over, knowing this town. But still. Frogs. At least it’s not another psycho trying to mindgame us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the Cthulhu Mythos, Ulthar is a small, medieval-ish town that only exists in the Dreamlands (i.e. in dreams). Its law states that no cat may be killed there, because the resident cats are highly intelligent and capable of stealthy mob violence if you're stupid enough to try to hurt them, leaving behind only a pile of bones. See Lovecraft's _The Cats of Ulthar_.
> 
> Although they don't actually talk in the original story. That's all Disney's fault.
> 
> Stiles is a ghoul in Derek's dream. In the Cthulhu Mythos, ghouls are an inhuman, canine-headed race who live underground on corpses, so they often hang around graveyards.
> 
> Lovecraft had some kind of phobia against frogs, since some of his most terrifying creations (the Deep Ones, Cthulhu) are described as looking frog-like or having frog-like aspects. Generally if something is 'batrachian,' it's evil.


	2. Chapter 2

“Well, probably not, but just in case, who have you pissed off in the last month or so?” Stiles asks, typing away at his laptop when Derek comes back with coffee and breakfast.

He’s sitting cross-legged on the bed, hair still damply scruffed from a shower while an also shower-smelling Peter is flopped in a half-curl behind him. Both of them are fully-dressed, and Peter even has his arm positioned so that the tablet in his hand is pointed at his face, even if he looks more interested in dozing with his head pushed into the side of Stiles’ thigh.

“Nobody,” Derek says, annoyed. Just because he’s not a pacifist like Scott—who, for that matter, seems to get into twice as many fights as the rest of them because of that—doesn’t mean he spends his whole day looking for trouble. “I was out on those two gigs and then at your place, and the jobs went fine.”

Stiles looks up and blinks, then laughs sheepishly. “Um, I wasn’t talking to you. I was—”

Lydia walks in from the bathroom. She is dressed, apparently including stealth charms, and doesn’t smell remotely like any kind of dodgy scenario, and anyway this is neither a sitcom nor a romcom, even if sometimes Derek thinks those make more sense than his life. “Why would it be down to _my_ enemies?” she snits to Stiles. “Assuming, purely for the purposes of this conversation, that I actually have any who are still alive.”

“Why is she here,” Derek says.

“Don’t kill him, he has my coffee,” Peter says. Then he twists himself onto one arm and pushes himself up, sighing impatiently. He flaps his hand till Derek goes and hands him the damn coffee, and then takes the slice of chocolate babka Derek got for himself. “All right. I won’t defend my nephew’s inability to remember any relationship not directly related to himself.”

“You’re clearly projecting your own failings, which sums you up just by itself, and at least he brings refreshments,” Lydia says, taking the croissant that Derek figured Peter would want. “And again—”

“First of all, you don’t actually literally bury people, you make me do it because I don’t wear expensive shoes,” Stiles says, back to staring at his laptop. “Second, because I already checked Peter and Derek, and Dad and Scott both say nothing’s going on in town, but you just got here and you did have that rebound who thought transplanting shoggoth tissue into caecilians was a good idea.”

Peter looks up from his coffee. “Do tell. Caecilians? Hardly seems your branch of science, let alone style.”

Derek’s long since learned not to ask questions he can look up on his phone, and avoid getting a five-minute download about things he’s going to want to remove from his brain with a scalpel later. So he googles ‘caecilians’ while Lydia attempts to turn Peter into a shatterable icicle with her eyes.

Stiles looks up too, then sighs and prods Peter’s arm with his knuckles. “Let’s not cast stones when just two weeks ago we were collecting shoggoth buds for artificial germination, and anyway, even if that guy had a thing for the apocalyptic collapse of ecosystems, he did have a nice back view so it’s not like I _can’t_ see the rebound attraction. Anyway. What happened to him, exactly?”

The mention of Lydia’s ex’s ass promptly flips Peter from self-satisfied to irked, while Lydia smiles and settles herself in the one armchair in the room, and still doesn’t answer Derek’s question. On the other hand, she’s also directing all of her aggravation towards Peter, who…has more experience with tangling with her anyway. And if by now, Peter doesn’t know better, well, he’s an adult and Derek isn’t his keeper.

By now Derek’s down to one cup of plain coffee—fine—plus a cup of fresh-squeezed orange juice, since he’s learned the hard way what happens when somebody provides Stiles with caffeine, and a couple bagels. The bagels are okay, just not really his idea of breakfast, so he takes the coffee and puts the rest on the end of the bed, and then goes into the kitchen to see whether there’s something better.

He keeps an ear on the conversation upstairs, which quickly moves off Lydia’s ex—who apparently is working for the U.S. military in South America and who wouldn’t randomly target the Hales because amusing her is the last thing he’d want to do now—and onto whether Peter properly secured some of the family heirlooms before he moved in with Stiles. Which is kind of unfair, even Derek will admit that. Peter takes magic seriously, and if this whole frog infestation is down to something Peter did or didn’t do, it’d be on purpose, not because he burned the wrong candle or forgot to tell Laura and Cora to sacrifice a mouse once a month or something like that.

Derek’s also reasonably sure that Peter isn’t interested in sabotaging the family these days. Not so much because Peter and Laura don’t still have arguments, because they do, but because he doesn’t see where Peter would find the time to do that in between manipulating all of the packs near his and Stiles’ rental to fight with each other so the rental’s cul-de-sac ends up an unpatrolled no-man’s-land. Stiles does all of the protective warding on the place so Peter’s denning instinct has to go somewhere, and nobody’s actually died yet so it’s not like Scott needs to know about it.

Anyway, Derek figures let Stiles and Lydia work out the cause, and if Peter wants to sit there and get territorial over some guy Lydia’s already banished from the continent, then that’s Peter’s thing. Derek’s found some cinnamon-and-chocolate cornflake cereal in the pantry and he can settle for that.

He’s working through his second bowl when somebody comes downstairs. They smell like Peter and Derek’s in the middle of a text argument with Cora about whether sending over Scott to get rid of Lydia is actually going to help—the answer is no, why is _Derek_ always criticized for having the death wish—so he isn’t listening that closely. So yeah, when Stiles asks him something, he whacks his spoon against the bowl and cracks it.

“Whoops, good thing I set up that IKEA account for Dad,” Stiles says, swooping past Derek for the paper towels. He smushes down some on the spreading milk puddle, then stands back as Derek suppresses a sigh and gets up to dump the bowl out into the sink. “Oh, hey, you could’ve…probably salvaged some of that. Though I guess better safe than having tiny ceramic chips perforating your stomach.”

Derek gives the cracked bowl a rinse and then drops it in the wastebin. “Werewolf.”

“Okay, but does that really mean you guys don’t mind the internal bleeding, however ephemeral, or is this your social dominance posturing rearing its head?” Stiles says, still wiping at the counter. “Like how Peter always talks about how irritating it is that other werewolves always immediately assume he’s an omega and kind of forgets to mention he didn’t sleep all night because he was burying their bodies?”

It’s nice that Stiles is really dedicated to understanding werewolves from the inside-out, Derek supposes. Even other werewolves sometimes don’t bother, which has led to a ridiculous number of times where some newbie bitten has lectured Derek about breaking whatever tradition that he’s never heard of. On the other hand, Derek isn’t Peter’s psychiatrist. “There’s more cereal,” he mutters. “I’ll just get another bowl.”

“Okay.” Stiles fidgets with the paper towels, then edges around Derek and tosses them as Derek proceeds to do just that. For a guy who talks as much as he does, Stiles can be hard to figure out. He’s not particularly afraid of werewolves, as far as Derek can tell, but for some reason he often smells like he’s worried around Derek, as if him offending Derek is really going to get anybody besides Derek in trouble. “Um. So. Lydia’s in San Francisco this month to help program the servers for our research project and she likes to know whenever I’m gonna be down Beacon Hills way so she can adjust her news alert algorithms for spikes in mass hysteria and stuff like that, so I texted her before we left.”

Derek pulls out of the pantry and looks at Stiles. “She got here from San Francisco?”

“Well, actually, she was apparently already on her way because she somehow got authorized to get the same alerts that my dad’s team does,” Stiles says, looking both embarrassed and annoyed. “I’m going to talk to her about that, just because we research Cthulhic entities who literally don’t have the biology to understand the concept of privacy doesn’t mean she gets a free pass on violating it.”

“Okay,” Derek says, and fills up a new bowl of cereal. “Is she going to help or is she just going to make Peter paranoid?”

“No, she’s going to help, it’s in her best interest with where your house is, any level three disturbance flows downstream and messes with our research on telluric…and I lost you, didn’t I?” Stiles says, with an awkwardly exaggerated chuckle. Apparently, it’s going to be one of those times where he remembers not everybody’s spent four years in a university dedicated to weirdness and is going to over-compensate for it. “Short version, she’s helping. And Peter’s not paranoid, he just never is sure whether Lydia’s going to blackmail him.”

Derek gets out the milk. “So he’s paranoid.”

“Well, it’s not paranoia if it’s a real threat,” Stiles says. He’s a little irritated and Derek briefly hopes it’ll be less awkward, but then Stiles bounces over and opens up a drawer and gets Derek a spoon. “So. You know, if you and Laura and Cora don’t, you know, _want_ Lydia to help because of some old history thing I don’t know about but you guys are all going to hint darkly at while doing the stoic suffering act because she’s my friend and I keep Peter happy and unhappy Peter is psycho Peter, you can totally tell me.”

It…takes a moment for Derek to work through that. Not because of the rambling, because once you learn to skip over all the Miskatonic jargon bits, Stiles isn’t any worse than Erica in terms of talking speed, but because Derek doesn’t quite understand why Stiles is asking for his opinion. “She’s going to help anyway, so why does it matter?”

“Because she’s going to help but she doesn’t _have_ to. I could tell her we’re good. I mean, honestly, once Dad sits down for a second and checks his email and finds out about the security breach, he’ll probably send her back.” Stiles wiggles the spoon at Derek, then drops it on the counter and makes a big show of stepping away so Derek can get it without fear of touching hands, or something completely irrelevant like that. “Unless I step in and I _could_ …not. You know what I’m saying?”

Sometimes Derek wishes Stiles would just go back to snapping orders and lecturing them on how they don’t know anything about Cthulhu things. With that Derek never has to figure out what the hell Stiles actually _means_ when he says something; it’s all out front. “If she’s going to help, I don’t see why telling her not to would be a good idea.”

And sometimes, with the way Stiles looks at him and then contemplates the nearest hard surface, clearly sizing it up for smacking his head against, Derek thinks they actually do understand each other just fine. It’s just it gets completely lost in actually communicating. “Okay, but it’s your family house and if you’re not comfortable with her working on it—look, whatever you did to each other, that’s for you and her to work out, but doing it through sabotage isn’t cool.”

“She’s not going to sabotage our house,” Derek says. He gives his cereal a couple stirs because he likes the flakes a little soggy, then starts spooning it up. “You can check with Laura or Peter if you want, but I’m not going to tell her to leave.”

“Peter said she’s indisputably knowledgeable, but he did it with that tone and facial expression that says each word is a wolfsbane poison pill and we’re totally going to have please-comfort-me sex later, once I get him over his pseudo-alpha attitude,” Stiles says. He pulls up a stool to the opposite side of the kitchen island and then props his elbows on the counter. “Sidebar on that—I was cutting him some slack because of the denning thing and I know he’s annoyed we haven’t closed on a permanent place so he can _really_ go to town on the home-security stuff, but is that really denning?”

Again, Derek needs a second. Because a lot of people have asked him about his opinion of Peter over the years, but it’s usually a rhetorical question. And look, he and Peter have—differences, but at the end of the day, Peter’s his uncle and they’re werewolves who had most of their family brutally murdered just for being werewolves and while that doesn’t _completely_ okay everything Peter’s done, Derek’s not so far up the homicidal-to-peaceful spectrum that he can’t see where Peter’s coming from.

“Pretending Lydia doesn’t bother him?” Derek finally asks.

“Yeah, that one,” Stiles says. “I’m not totally sure it’s the blackmail either. He’s a lot more subtle than you but I get some posturing cues. I mean, does he really think she’s going to flash throat at him?”

Derek snorts. “No, but what else is he going to do? Not go on defense?”

“So it’s denning,” Stiles says triumphantly.

“Probably,” Derek says, lifting another spoonful. “Probably also he’s still worried she likes you.”

He gets that spoonful down and then realizes that the weird crunching noise isn’t from the cereal, it’s from Stiles. The other man’s staring at Derek and making a hiccupping noise so sharp it comes off a little like crunching. Derek tunes into Stiles’ windpipe and diaphragm and neither of them sound like the man is choking, but he drops the spoon and goes around the table anyway and that’s when Stiles lets out a strange little screech.

Stiles makes odd noises. Derek doesn’t know whether this is part of Miskatonic University training or some side-effect of the supernaturally-infected areas where Stiles has done research, or just is natural. But if it _is_ natural, Derek doesn’t think he’s ever met a were of any kind with the same range of noises. So then they’re probably back to mutation.

“Likes me?” Stiles squeaks out, his eyes still wide. “Like, _likes_ me? Like a high school like? Like I thought you people have super-senses and can smell that sort of thing and so we can avoid all the awkward misunderstandings in that category and just skip straight to lust isn’t love?”

“I don’t know, ask Lydia. I have no idea what goes through her head and neither does Peter. That’s why she bothers him,” Derek says, jerking back. He takes a step away from the counter, then sighs and goes back for the cereal.

“Oh, hey, okay, sorry, I didn’t mean to just lay out all my psychological mapping of Peter’s various insecurities on you, just because you’re family,” Stiles says. He reaches out with his arm and flails for Derek’s sleeve and almost tips himself off the stool.

For somebody who’s allowed near artifacts with the kind of destructive power that requires advance notice to the U.S. military, he’s kind of clumsy. Derek ends up moving over just to shove him back on the stool. “Look, Lydia’s here, whatever,” Derek mutters. “If she really starts bothering me, I’ll let you know.”

“And actually, I think I believe you when you say that,” Stiles says. Suddenly he’s composed again, looking up at Derek with a sharp curiosity that makes Derek regret not just leaving the cereal. “You were pissed off when you saw her but you’re okay with her now.”

“Well, I’m not Peter, if I don’t like something, I don’t like it and don’t see why I need to act like I do. But if I can’t change it, then what’s the point of keeping at it?” Derek says irritably. When he’s sure Stiles is stable on the stool, he shakes off the man’s grip. Then sighs as he almost hears the question crawling up Stiles’ throat. “Look, that’s not—she surprised me. I don’t like that. But now that I know why she’s here…it makes sense, so fine. So as long as it just stays like that, I’ll just not talk to her and wait till somebody tells me I can punch whatever to stop the frogs.”

Stiles nods as if that also makes sense to him and sits back. He’s quiet for a few minutes, so Derek ends up sticking around to slurp down the rest of the bowl so he doesn’t have to bring that back to wash up. Then he clears his throat.

“No, use the purple bottle. The green stuff isn’t going to hurt you, but it can make leafy greens or anything with a lot of selenium taste like dog shit, and Dad might use that one for salads. Which he swears to God he eats,” Stiles says. He points Derek to the right dishwashing fluid. “I’ll tell Lydia she needs to announce her visits. She should anyway, and honestly, it’s not like it keeps her from making a dramatic entrance. Besides, it’s kind of amateur to keep relying on the horror jumpscare effect.”

“If you want to,” Derek says after a second, looking back over at the man.

Stiles shrugs. “It’s not a lot to ask, and sure, Peter and I are…yeah. But it’s not like you have to have sex with me for me to care. Um. Okay, that may have—have equated prostitution and sympathy in a way that I didn’t mean to do.”

“I don’t even know what that means, so I’m not going to bother being offended,” Derek says. He racks the bowl and spoon and splashes a little water in his mouth to rinse cornflake bits off his molars, then heads towards the living room. “If I go to sleep, neither of them are going to kill each other so I have to help bury somebody when I wake up, right?”

“What, Peter and Lydia? No. Although I probably should go back up, I’ve been…wow, okay, I was down here a while,” Stiles says, checking his phone and wincing. 

Derek pauses and tunes into the upstairs noises. Which are way too muffled, and right, obviously Stiles’ dad is going to have the same magical wards that Stiles does. So…well, if somebody has died, Derek should probably get his nap in now while he can. So he goes on to the couch.

* * *

Stiles’ dad’s house does have a spare bedroom just for Derek, but it’s actually an office most of the time and the bed is a foldout stuffed into one of the hall closets. Which Derek could get and unfold, but he’s tired and the couch looks okay and people always get the wrong impression from his car and his coats, but he’s not actually that high-maintenance. He just likes leather jackets, which are worth shelling out on if you want one to last more than a couple full moons, and he’s on the road a lot so he might as well spend his driving time in something he loves.

So he sacks out on the couch and ends up dreaming again.

This time he’s not in a graveyard. He’s behind his family’s house and the full moon is overhead, unnaturally big and low, with a golden cast to it so it looks like a ripe fruit ready to drop and burst any second. But he doesn’t feel that drag at his bones, a cross between ache and hunger that no one who’s not a werewolf will ever really understand, so he’s sure it’s a dream.

The other thing is that right in front of him, a naked, filthy Peter is crawling over the grass on hands and knees with the neck of a mauled deer firmly between his teeth, and that’s definitely never going to happen. Sure, Peter eats venison and game. Sure, Peter has no problems with mauling things. But those things don’t go together. Peter is, in his own words, a ‘keen exploiter of civilization,’ and he’s not going to go running naked through the woods and then plop down with a deer carcass and eat it raw, with no seasoning, no expensive bottle of wine, no _cleaning_. Because that gut that’s just spilled out of the slashed deer belly looks pretty full of half-digested food to Derek, and it’s getting all over Peter’s legs.

And Peter’s just going at it, never mind all the dirt and worse smeared over him. He crouches over the deer and cracks open the ribcage with his hands and then sticks his head in. When he pulls back, he’s got part of the deer’s heart dangling from his clenched teeth, and more bits of it dripping down his neck and chest. And it’s just—

Well, it’s not right, obviously. It’s not Peter. But at the same time…maybe it’s how _gleeful_ Peter looks about it, not just gleeful like he’s thoroughly enjoying himself but gleeful like he’s not thinking about how he looks to other people. Peter usually doesn’t care what people think of him, but he damn well _thinks_ about how they’ll think of him, and Derek can’t remember the last time he caught Peter this off-guard. Real Peter, anyway.

Yeah, gleeful. And digging in again and again, more juicy gobbets dripping from his mouth and slicking down his muscles, slipping into the defined creases between them as his shoulders and chest flex with the obvious effort he’s putting into tearing apart the deer and this is not Peter and Derek is dreaming and Derek still feels goddamn humiliated to realize he’s getting aroused over this. It’s _fake Peter_ , for God’s sake.

“I look demented, for the love of all that’s decent,” a small but distinctly offended voice says somewhere near Derek’s knee. Derek starts, catches himself from reflexively putting his hand over his crotch, and the same Peterish cat from the previous night looks disdainfully up at him. “Well, perhaps decency is too much to ask for, given present company, but at the very least, you could credit me with some style.”

Derek looks at the cat, who looks at the Peter devouring the deer, sniffs haughtily, and then starts to lick its hind leg. “What?” Derek says.

The cat glances at him again, then narrows its eyes. Then it suddenly gets up, walks off a few paces, turns around and arches its back and sits down again. “Also, Derek, the subtext here isn’t so much text as a marquee billboard on Times Square. I don’t really see what’s the point in hiding when you aren’t, in fact, hiding it.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” Derek snaps. He jabs a finger towards dream-Peter, not looking, and trying very hard to not listen to the increasingly loud moans dream-Peter is making around those mouthfuls of meat. “I don’t know where that came from and I don’t even know why I’m dreaming because I don’t dream anymore and this is all just going to turn out to be some fucking thing invading my head again, and I know, you saw it coming and fucking _everyone_ sees that coming with me—”

At first the cat’s amused, but then its hackles go up and its ears go back. Then the ears gradually lift and it starts to give off a confused air. “You think you’re possessed?”

“Do you think I’d come up with that by myself?” Derek says, and before he can catch himself, he turns towards dream-Peter. Halfway through he does at least realize what he’s doing, and he winces and braces down and…

…jerks his head off the sofa arm. His knees jerk up too, into something yielding that lets out a snarl and sticks claws into his calf. Derek snarls back but doesn’t lash out, and when his mind catches up with his instincts, he realizes that’s because it’s pack who’s lying on top of his legs.

Specifically, Peter, who jams the point of his elbow into Derek’s shin to lever himself up and then pokes with great concern at his completely unbruised, unbroken nose. “Good God, Derek, do we need to start draping you in _mara_ amulets again?”

“You were sleeping on me.” Derek pulls his legs away from Peter and pushes up against the sofa arm. “ _Why_ were you sleeping on me?” 

“On the other hand,” Peter says, taking his hand down and sniffing repeatedly. “Perhaps it’s not nightmares that’s the issue. When we get access to the house again, I should see if the flooding destroyed those Tantric…oh, no, never mind, I can just get anti-puberty charms from the Miskatonic dorm handbook…”

He’s putting Derek down, but he’s doing it a lot more pointedly than usual, which actually means that he’s feeling embarrassed about being caught out. Derek pauses and tracks Stiles’ and Lydia’s heartbeats to the same bedroom upstairs, then narrows his eyes at Peter. “Did they kick you out?”

“I’m still in the house, Derek,” Peter says after a second. As he does, he absently rubs the side of his face and then uses the same hand to rub at the couch.

It’s probably going to get Derek lured into a near-death experience later, but Derek starts to smirk. “The math, right? She started in with the extra-linear algebra whatever, so you left and the denning is getting to you but you can’t mark up the place because it’s Stiles’ dad’s rental and I’m—”

“Relying far too heavily on your status as pack member to protect you, considering your sisters are only a phone call away and not any more occupied,” Peter says irritably. He still has to make an effort to catch himself and stop trying to scent the couch into smelling like he’s claimed it, and when he realizes Derek is watching for that, he curls his lip and lets out a soft snarl before abruptly getting up. “Anyway, if the way you were dreaming is any indication, you clearly shouldn’t be left to your own devices.”

“I’m not five, Peter, you don’t have to invent reasons to get out of babysitting me. You don’t even have to babysit me,” Derek mutters, getting up himself. The cricks in his neck and knees immediately go away, courtesy of his healing, but his head still feels…cloudy. Maybe that’s the word.

Anyway, he hates to admit it, but Peter’s not making those sniffing noises because there’s nothing to smell. And he’s not about to fall asleep again, so he should go do something.

He could shower. Text Laura and see where she ended up staying; he’s not texting Cora because he never knows when Erica or Boyd has her phone. Do something about having two bizarrely erotic dreams about his uncle and his uncle’s boyfriend in the same twenty-four hours.

“Oh, fine,” Peter sighs, as if anywhere on that list was pestering him for something, and then he turns away while waving for Derek to follow him.

He doesn’t wait to see whether Derek will before he starts walking away. And Derek…follows him, because sometimes Derek’s life is about making choices between what’s going to annoy him now and what’s going to screw him over later. Actually, a lot of time it’s like that. 

Derek assumes they’re going back upstairs to check on Stiles and Lydia, especially if Peter’s territorial instincts are riding him so hard that he’s resorted to snuggling up to Derek, but instead Peter leads them outside, into the backyard. The place Stiles’ father is renting is pretty near the preserve, and from there they can see the hill where their house is, though they can’t see the house itself. It looks pretty normal.

“Has Laura called you at all?” Peter asks him.

“I just woke up,” Derek says. He looks at Peter, who doesn’t change his impatient expression. “You were right there. You were _on_ me.”

Peter’s eyelids flutter a little and his lips move silently, and whoever he’s praying to, Derek’s pretty sure it’s the kind of god that Stiles wrote a research paper on at some point. “Never mind,” Peter says. “Now listen, they’ve more or less ruled out the chance that this is Cthulhic—”

“Then why is there a Miskatonic team cleaning out our house, if they could figure it out that fast?” Derek says.

“Well, did you want to catch all those frogs yourself?” Peter snaps. Then he makes a clear effort to rein himself in. “Derek. This isn’t the time to get into a pissing contest over a house we can’t live in anyway.”

It’s on the tip of Derek’s tongue to point out that he wasn’t remotely going in that direction, but instead he glues his lips together and makes an attempt to look like he isn’t annoyed. Which makes his face hurt.

Peter isn’t close to convinced either, but it amuses him enough that he stops having those muscle twitches under the skin that means he’s close to shift. “Anyway, as I was saying, it’s not a Cthulhic influence, but it looks enough like one that they want to be cautious, in case it’s another one of those mimics.”

“We’re sure it’s not the new Nemeton, right?” Derek says. “Doesn’t that thing act a lot like Cthulhic entities?”

His uncle stares at him.

“Look, I might go off into the other room but I still hear all that stuff Stiles babbles about,” Derek says, shifting irritably. He’s starting to wish his sister would call him, just so he can get out of this conversation. “He’s gone over it enough times, and Scott’s pet squirrel still has those tentacles, and even I get it at this point, okay?”

“Oh, it’s okay. It’s perfectly okay, and in fact, I’m pleasantly surprised that you’ve managed to retain some useful information and saved me the trouble of having to educate you,” Peter says, settling back into his usual smug air. Although now that Derek’s looking at him, there’s a faint sofa crease across the side of Peter’s forehead that disarms Peter’s cocked brow. “Yes, the Nemeton’s a possibility, and they’re looking into it, but—”

“I thought Laura had Deaton up to do a whole slew of new protections on the house once they realized the Nemeton was growing back with half an octopus body.” That crease really is taking a while to fade, Derek thinks. He automatically whiffs at Peter’s scent, but doesn’t detect any kind of injury or sickness in it.

Peter’s back to being annoyed. “Yes, she did, and Stiles assisted in that, since Deaton’s hardly an authority in the area, so they shouldn’t have given way.”

“But they did,” Derek says. Then blinks and belatedly stiffens up as Peter rumbles low in the throat, just short of a warning growl.

It irritates Peter to be teased about denning, but that’s because Peter hates being out of control, not because he’s ashamed to be that attached to Stiles. If anything, Derek sometimes thinks the only reason Peter doesn’t use Stiles as an excuse to go on a murderous rampage against neighboring packs is because Stiles’ dad does _not_ like it when they ask his team to help out with non-related-to-Miskatonic-research dead bodies. Which has led to some ridiculous situations where they end up having to make weird supernatural deaths even weirder, just so that they don’t have to hide a corpse in the basement.

Anyway, that makes sense to Derek. It’s not fair—it’s not like he was calling Stiles incompetent, he was just saying what happened—but mating up isn’t about fairness and so Derek sighs and ducks his head.

What doesn’t make sense is Peter’s reaction to that, where he stops being aggressive but then, for a brief moment, almost looks embarrassed with himself. He hastily covers by sighing heavily and running his hand back through his hair, acting as exasperated with Derek as he is any other time. “He’s looking into it,” Peter says. “Since his wards broke, it’s less likely that it’s the Nemeton and more so that it’s something new he didn’t account for. His and Lydia’s algorithm apparently should finish mapping out the most likely sources of the disturbance later today. However, even if we figure out where this is all originating from, we may not be able to get into the house for a good while. Cleaning out all the frogs is just the start of it—they’ll have to redo all the wards and protections from scratch, seeing as it was the basement—”

“And everything’s grounded in the foundation and when the foundation is wrecked you have to fix all the magic and I don’t ignore everything you say, either,” Derek says. He’s a little more sarcastic than he needs to be, considering Peter backed down too, but it’s just habit at this point. People treat him like he’s the world’s most supernatural-unsavvy werewolf and he has to remind them that they were there when he was _born_ a supernatural being.

Peter’s eyes narrow and for a second Derek thinks they’re going to go through another round of posturing. “Well, then you understand when I say it may be a _while_ , and…what are you looking at?”

“I think you marked your head,” Derek says, looking at what he’d thought was a crease.

He jerks his chin towards the spot and Peter frowns, cocks his head disbelievingly, and then lifts one hand to rub at his forehead. Then Peter looks at his fingers. Rubs them together, sniffs at them, and then makes a face and pulls out his phone to use the screen as a mirror as he rubs the…there must have been a dust bunny caught in the cushions or something like that, which ground into Peter’s skin when he got on the couch with Derek. 

The way Peter wipes at himself reminds Derek of the cat from the dream, and then he remembers that he’d found his uncle _attractive_ and—Peter sniffs suddenly, then looks up sharply. “Derek?” he says. 

“I’m fine. House is a mess again, but that’s what happens every time I’m in town,” Derek mutters. He barely stops himself from jerking backward and concentrates on cold, slimy frogs instead. “Great.”

“You hardly go there anymore,” Peter says in a half-puzzled, half-reprimanding tone.

Derek doesn’t understand either part of that tone. “I _don’t_ live there,” he tells his uncle. “I don’t have the storage space to take out all my things, that’s the only reason why I don’t want Cora poking around in my room. She’s always borrowing something and then Erica ends up with it.”

For some reason, that seems to confuse Peter even more. “You have your own bedroom, with a very generous closet, and Stiles even went through the trouble of posting translations of his Aklo labels so that you have a third of the meat freezer all to yourself.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, Stiles does way more than he needs to for a guest, especially somebody who keeps forgetting to write down what type of bloodstain is on his laundry, and I’m not about to start threatening your den, okay?” Derek mutters. At least, he assumes that’s where Peter’s ultimately coming from, checking that Derek isn’t seriously going to start bedding down in what’s Peter’s territory—packmakes and family, sure, like werewolves _actually_ function like a hippie commune—now that Derek’s temporarily without the family house as a fallback. “I’m not going to fall for it, I’m keeping all my scent-marking out of there.”

It’s the only explanation that makes sense of why Peter appears to be genuinely interested in how Derek is taking things, but judging from the look on Peter’s face, it’s not the right explanation. The other man opens and closes his mouth a few times, a frustrated look on his face, and then he rubs his hand over his eyes and ends that in pinching the bridge of his nose. “Well, at any rate, I just want you to understand that for the time being, the house is going to be off-limits, and based on what Stiles and Lydia have so far, we really should _not_ be pushing the envelope on this one,” Peter says into his hand. “As usual, I don’t have any idea what your plans were going to be for the next month, but if they require _anything_ that is in the house, and by ‘require’ I mean it is an actual, dire, non-substitutable necessity and not just a matter of being geographically closer than the nearest retailer—”

“I’m not going into the house, Peter,” Derek finally snaps. He glances at the hillside rising up out of the preserve, then gives up on the conversation and just stalks back inside. “I get it, okay? I’m not going over there any time soon.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Caecilians, like frogs, are a type of amphibian. A shoggoth is a giant slug-like monster that can cause insanity just by seeing it, when they aren't acting as indestructible and unstoppable slaves of cosmic horror aliens. The idea of them budding is swiped from Elizabeth Bear's _Shoggoths in Bloom_.


	3. Chapter 3

“No, I think it’d all be in your house. I don’t think we have any of that just lying around,” Scott says, frowning in concern. He starts to turn around and putter in the garage shelves, like that’s going to help fix the issue, and then sees how Chris Argent is looking at him. Pulls back with a sheepish air and goes with checking something on his phone instead. “I think even at the clinic…right, we had to make room for the baby Nemeton growing room, so we packed that stuff up and Laura took it back to your house.”

Derek isn’t planning to break into his damn family’s house. He doesn’t want to. He was, in fact, listening to Peter, and he’s not the kind of person who thinks it’s a fantastic idea to wander into forbidden areas just to see if other people were right about them being forbidden. Basically, he’s not Stiles, and since moving out of Beacon Hills, he’s really enjoyed the benefits of being geographically incapable of being hauled into whatever expedition McCall is mounting.

On the other hand, he’s also not an idiot about what two weird dreams in a row mean for somebody who’s previously been possessed by an evil spirit, so he wants to get that taken care of. “All of it. All of the anti-dreaming stuff. You didn’t keep any of it.”

“I’m going to ask Alan if maybe we kept any back, but I’m pretty sure the answer is no because nobody else was using it,” Scott says.

Derek grimaces. It’s not that he has anything against Deaton. He’s not Peter and doesn’t think Deaton’s the figurehead for some global druid-monitoring program, because unlike Peter, he doesn’t have hobbies that would get people like the druids that interested in him. And unlike Laura, he’s also never really expected Deaton to be completely on his family’s side; what Kate Argent taught Derek early on was that everybody’s got their own agenda, even Derek’s own family. So Deaton has and can be helpful, but the guy also has his own interests to look after, and more importantly, has been educated to _never_ withhold information from Melissa McCall, and basically Derek’s main concern here is to not let the whole goddamn town know he might be having his mind invaded again.

The tiny Peter-voice in his head, which now has an annoying cat purr undertone, points out that Derek voluntarily sneaked out of Stiles’ house while Peter was off guarding his mate against Lydia’s sarcasm to find Scott fucking McCall. Derek makes a face again and suddenly Chris, of all people, clears his throat and reaches over to cover Scott’s phone with his hand.

“There isn’t anything left, I remember when we helped pack it up,” Chris says. He’s…not his sister or his father, clearly, or else he wouldn’t always smell like Melissa’s preferred brand of body wash, but he’s also not somebody Derek normally relies upon to be sympathetic. “But depending on what’s going on, we might not need anything from there to deal with it. What kind of dreams are these?”

Mostly, or so Derek thinks Chris’ expression currently says, Chris just wants to avoid having multiple disasters at the same time. Which Derek can get on board with. “Weird ones.”

Scott and Chris both look at him. “What kind of weird?” Scott eventually asks, in the kind of tone you use with somebody who may or may not be too close to the window ledge. “Wait, maybe we should…hang on, I’m going to find that checklist.”

“Checklist?” Derek asks, and Scott winces again.

Chris doesn’t bother looking uncomfortable about that, just digs out his phone and swipes a few times on it. “After you, Melissa asked Alan and I to put together a checklist of warning signs. We just updated it to add in some items from Miskatonic’s psychological stability screeners…here. Okay, what’s the landscape like?”

Derek’s been over at Stiles’ and Peter’s rental when they were interviewing interns to help out with that graduate project of Lydia’s, so he’s watched somebody run through the screener before. He’s even seen somebody _fail_ the screener, which is when he discovered that that phone of Stiles’ also doubles as a magical taser. “Outdoors. Not anywhere I recognize but I’m not in a ruined city or anything like that.”

There was the cemetery, but that’s not a _city_ , and if there’s one thing Derek has picked up from Stiles, it’s that if other people aren’t precise, you’re better off looking up the right chant rather than being nice and correcting them.

“What about plain ruins?” Chris asks. Because he’s a hunter, and also probably because these days his scent has a bit of Stiles’ father’s boot-leather in it, too.

“I was in a graveyard for one, but it wasn’t attached to anything,” Derek admits. “No church. And it wasn’t like _A Christmas Carol_ , I didn’t read any of the tombstones.”

“Were you by yourself?” Scott pipes up, now also looking at Chris’ phone.

Derek presses his lips together for a moment. “There was a talking cat.”

The other two men look up at him. Then Scott glances at Chris, who just ticks an eyebrow, glances back at the phone, pokes something and then raises both eyebrows at whatever happened. “Did it quote any foreign languages at you?”

“No, and it didn’t quote anything that remotely resembles Cthulhic chanting, which I’ve heard Stiles go over enough times that I do know what it should sound like. I don’t think I’m getting taken over by a cosmic horror alien,” Derek says. He’s starting to think he should have just gotten Scott on his own. Sure, that would’ve increased the chances that Melissa would find out and blame Derek for whatever happened, but at least they would’ve had time to get somewhere first. Scott usually doesn’t remember about things like checklists, and even when he does, he’s a lot easier to drag off on a tangent than Chris. “We all talked in English the whole time.”

“‘All’?” Chris echoes.

He’s about to ask who else was in the dream and if Derek wanted to discuss that, he would have just asked Stiles, since Stiles could whip up some kind of charm for him from scratch. “Me and the cat, nobody else talked,” Derek says. “It wasn’t about death dying or great lords rising again or anything like that, it was pretty normal conversation.”

“Well, if the dreams weren’t unusual, what about them is worrying you?” Scott asks.

“I didn’t say they were unusual. I said they were weird,” Derek says, irritated. Then he has to back off the tone because Chris is looking even more suspicious by the second. “I had two in a row, to start with, and they sort of fit together. Like a recurring dream. And I meant it was normal conversation in that it wasn’t about the apocalypse or a lot of bad omens or anything like that, but it wasn’t stuff I usually talk about. In dreams or when I’m awake.”

Looking confused, Scott starts to ask a question, then stops himself. He does that twice, with frequent glances at Chris’ phone, while Chris just continues to regard Derek the entire time. When the next question finally comes, it’s from Chris. “Have you been sleepwalking?”

“No,” Derek says.

“Shifting when you weren’t expecting it?” Chris asks. “Feeling like you want to go swimming a lot?

Derek shakes his head.

“Any unusual cravings?” Chris says.

“For…things to eat?” Derek says, frowning. Does the man think he’s been humanized and bitten, or turned into a different kind of were? “No.”

“Headaches?” Scott pipes up. “Or daytime hallucinations? You’re not hearing any voices, are you? Or maybe music, like classical? Flutes?”

“No to all of that, and I thought I told you, it’s not Cthulhic. That includes Nyarlathotep,” Derek says, resisting the urge to grab Chris’ phone and just fill in the checklist himself. “If any of that was going on, I would’ve led with that. Actually, I wouldn’t even have asked you what was happening, I would’ve just told you.”

Scott politely clears his throat. “Well, you didn’t ask us that either, you just asked us what happened to all the dream charms you didn’t take with you when you—”

Just then, something small and quivering and quivering in places it shouldn’t be quivering suddenly pops out of Scott’s shirt-collar. Derek instinctively snarls and pops out his claws and the thing dives back into Scott’s shirt, while Scott, smelling _very_ confused, nevertheless squares up to Derek with red eyes and fangs out.

“It’s just his squirrel,” Chris says from the side. His hand hasn’t even gone for his gun. He’s still running through the checklist on his phone. “Scott, maybe you should take off that heartbeat shield for a second.”

“Huh? Oh, sorry.” Scott drops back and out of shift, and pulls what had looked like one of those beach-surfer braided-leather bracelets off his wrist. The second he does, Derek immediately hears a tiny, fluttering heartbeat. It creeps up Scott’s back by haphazard inches before a little furry head hesitantly peeks out again, framed by a tail of toothpick-thin tentacles coiling nervously behind it. “I usually have that on so Quint doesn’t spook all the time, but I keep forgetting it works both ways.

He reaches up and gives the squirrel an absent pat, and the squirrel promptly scrambles onto his shoulder and leans out and peers at Derek. Something about it is—Derek catches himself averting his eyes, and barely stops himself from snarling again. And he has no idea why, since he knew about Scott’s pet. He’s _seen_ Scott’s pet before, since Scott takes the thing everywhere with him and has brought it over when visiting Stiles, and it’s never bothered him before.

“You walked into the garage fine so it’s not anything demonically based either, that would’ve set off the runes,” Chris is saying under his breath, staring at his phone. “Not Cthulhic doesn’t rule out it being a living person trying to curse you, but seems like you would’ve done something besides dream if that was the case…have you told Stiles or Peter to look out for that? You’re staying with them, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, and I said I didn’t think it was far along so I just want to get what I need to cut it off now,” Derek says. “Then they don’t have to worry about it.”

Scott frowns. “So…you _haven’t_ told Stiles.”

“It just started. It’s only been two dreams, and he’s working with Lydia on my family’s house, which is probably more important,” Derek snaps. He glances at the door, then takes out his phone as it buzzes. He’s worried it might be Peter, asking where he’s gone, but instead it turns out to be Laura asking whether they’re going to have family lunch or not. And Derek’s got no idea what she’s talking about, but at least that’ll get him out of here, seeing that he’s clearly not about to get any help from Scott and Chris. “I’m just dreaming, I’m not doing anything, it’s annoying but it’s not actually making things happen when I’m awake.”

Chris stops Scott from asking another question, and then raises his hand as Derek turns to go. “Look, Derek, you obviously called us for a reason,” he says. “If you’re that bothered by it, is it really a good idea to keep it to yourself?”

“I’m not. That’s why I asked if you had any of those things left,” Derek points out.

“Then what’s the problem with letting Stiles know?” Scott asks. “I’m sure he could help. He’s been beefing up Mom and Allison on Great Old One mindgames ever since we got back in touch, and just last week he was showing me this really cool dreamcatcher pattern for ghoul—”

“Are they the problem?” Chris suddenly says. “Stiles and Peter?”

Scott jerks sharply, then turns and looks at Chris in shock. The squirrel on his shoulder lets out an angry-sounding chitter and Chris winces, his scent filling up with embarrassment. “Stiles wouldn’t do something like that, or let anybody do that,” Scott says firmly, and then his eyes widen. “Oh, no, or did you mean maybe it’s gotten to _them_ —”

“What? No—neither of those, I just meant…is that why you don’t want to talk to them?” Chris says with a grimace. He’s also eyeing the squirrel a little warily, which makes Derek feel a bit better about edging back when the squirrel abruptly skitters over to perch on Scott’s other, closer-to-Derek shoulder. “Because the dream’s got to do with them?”

“It’s not a prophecy. I’m pretty sure about that,” Derek says after a few seconds. “Like I said, there’s a talking cat. And I don’t think it’s about them, but dreams just…sometimes they use things that are familiar, right? To try and sneak into your mind? And I just want them to stop so nobody has to worry about me in the middle of everything else, okay? ”

The squirrel is peering at Derek again. He tries not to look at it, but out of the corner of his eye, he keeps catching its movements and it’s sniffing at him or something, turning its head this way and that, while those tail-tentacles keep fluffing out. Derek absently wonders how that doesn’t bother Scott, having those things right next to his ear, and then Scott reaches up and actually _tickles_ the tentacles.

“Well, I still think you should mention it to Stiles. And if it’s a big deal or you need somebody else to watch you, nobody’s in our spare bedroom right now,” Scott says. He gets the squirrel to turn around and face him, then scoops it up and pops it into his jacket-pocket, where it starts munching on something. “I’ll go ask Mom again too, but she and Stiles’ dad were saying absolutely nobody in the house for the next two days, till the fumigators at least had time to work…but I think we put those boxes in the attic, so if you went on the roof—”

“We’re not breaking into the house,” Chris says. He looks Derek hard in the eye, then does the same to Scott. “Look, I’ll check around my place, I might have a couple fetishes you can borrow. You don’t need to sleep any time in the next eight to twelve hours, do you? You haven’t been drugging yourself awake again?”

“No,” Derek says shortly. Yes, he’s happy to finally be getting somewhere. No, that doesn’t really make him like Chris acting like some alpha to him. “I’ll be fine. It’s just—just distracting. And I’ll think about telling Stiles, but if you could just let me do that and not set off Peter, I’d appreciate it. He’s already twitchy about having to leave their place to come here.”

“Oh, is the denning acting up again?” Scott says. “I thought Stiles said they talked it out, after Peter talked those two alphas into getting themselves jailed for disorderly conduct and vandalizing a swimming pool.”

Chris looks at Scott again. “What?”

Come to think of it, Derek should’ve just brought up the instinct thing to begin with. As a hunter, even if he’s been reformed by the McCalls, Chris still tends to buy the whole ‘call of the wild’ explanation, and Scott’s just such a weird ‘true alpha’ werewolf that he thinks it’s impolite to question anything other werewolves tell him about ‘normal’ werewolves. Even years of being pack-ish with Cora and Erica haven’t debunked that one for him. “Short version, Peter’s touchy right now and most of my stuff is currently in his and Stiles’ apartment, so if I can’t get into my family’s house, I’d still like to be able to get to that,” Derek says. “Okay?”

Both Scott and Chris look reluctant, but they eventually nod. “Just don’t keep it to yourself if anything else strange happens to you,” Chris tells Derek. “And don’t go into your damn house. Period.”

* * *

Derek doesn’t go into his family home. He goes out to lunch with his family.

“No, the Miskatonic people actually have a little tent office set up and the pop-up bed’s pretty comfortable,” Laura says, using one hand to rub her neck while she chopsticks noodles out of her pho with the other. “I think I cricked it when I was going for my morning run and tripped over a new Nemeton sapling.”

“It’s still sending out runners?” Stiles says, perking up.

He starts to reach for his phone, but Peter flicks that away, sending it skittering into the side of Derek’s hand. Stiles and Derek both look at it, and then Stiles looks back as his hand lands instead on a plate of summer rolls that’s just been slid under it. “Lydia said she’d text when the algorithm’s run, and till she does, you’re at your full allotment of server resources. I’m sure Deaton will send over an updated map if you ask, anyway,” Peter says primly, like he truly is only interested in Stiles’ health. And then, as Stiles narrows slightly bloodshot eyes at him, he dips up some noodles and sucks an endless stream of them into his mouth, occasionally pumping his chopstick tips in and out of his puckered lips.

Laura leans past Derek and politely pushes the window open a little more, so they get the breeze, while Cora grabs a fistful of herbs from the big center plate and smushes them under her nose. Peter finally finishes his slurp and gives them all a look of tolerant amusement.

“I think I’ve had to slick up my nostrils with oil of cloves enough times during your respective puberties,” he says.

“You are a terrible, terrible person and this is why when we eat out with my dad, we’re stuck going to salad bars, because I’d like to see you make eating arugula pornographic,” Stiles mutters, grabbing at the summer rolls. He stabs it into the sauce dish and then chews off the end, still huffy, absently wiping off the fish sauce from his chin and then licking it from his fingers and completely missing the way that Peter’s stopped looking amused and started shifting in place. “Which isn’t actually a challenge, Peter, even a rhetorical one, and okay, fine, I will leave recent Nemeton developments alone even if it’s revolutionary to see cross-kingdom fertilization, let alone _Plantae_ adaptions of _Fungi_ driven by Cthulhic biological—”

“So tripping over the new baby tentacle tree,” Cora interrupts loudly. “Did it try to eat you? Is it another one with a mouth, or just one with the grabby suckers?”

Looking relieved, Laura nudges Derek to pass her the chili sauce. “Grabby suckers. Honestly, I think it was as embarrassed as I was. Soon as I got up and went over, it curled up and got as close as a baby tree could to hiding under the leaf litter. I shot John and Alan a text and they got a team out to mark it.”

“Is your neck going to be okay?” Stiles says. He looks a little nervous when they all look at him. “So I am work-obsessed, yes, but Dad did his best to get some manners into me. That and basic first aid. And we’ve got a physical therapist on the team if you need something realigned.”

“Oh. No, yeah, I know Randolph,” Laura says. She doses up her noodles with the chili sauce and then starts mixing it up with her chopsticks and spoon. “I don’t think it’s that big a deal, I think when I tripped it just kinked the neck cartilage and our healing is shitty when it comes to stuff like that. I’ll get Derek or Cora to pop my neck after we eat.”

Cora puts down her iced coffee and sticks up her arm, elbow out, so when Laura tosses her hair out of the way of the noodles, she runs the point of her jaw into its point. All of the werewolves, even Peter, grimace at the muffled crackle, and then Laura grabs her jaw and twists around to glare at Cora.

“You’re welcome,” Cora says, already back in her pho.

“I said _after_ we eat, so I didn’t have to worry about accidentally spitting all over Stiles,” Laura says irritably, jerking her chin across the table.

“You didn’t have anything in your mouth,” Cora says.

Stiles attempts to stifle his nervous chuckle, then jumps twice when Derek’s sisters look at him. Derek’s pretty sure the second jump has something to do with Peter’s one hand no longer being above the table and the flash of a snarled upper lip that Peter gives Laura and Cora.

“Well, okay, now that we’re all skeletally aligned again…quiet out there? Aside from the baby Nemeton run-in?” Stiles asks.

“Are you staying out there tonight?” Derek asks, almost at the same time. He wasn’t planning on talking over Stiles and he drops his head over his bowl, avoiding whatever dirty look Peter’s giving him.

Laura hands back the chili paste, but keeps stirring her noodles. “I was kind of thinking about it.”

“It’s not going to speed up anything,” Peter says. Then he frowns at the surprised looks. “I’m merely pointing out the obvious. And I hardly think it’s a betrayal of the family interest to note that they’ve put so many magical wards and alarms and monitors on the house that an in-person guard is superfluous.”

“Yeah, I know, I just feel like…sitting out there is less likely to make me go crazy than sitting somewhere in town, wondering what’s the problem this time,” Laura sighs. She finally dabs up some noodles, but barely a mouthful. Her scent goes a little shocked and she hastily reaches for her bubble tea.

Peter looks bemused about both her comment and her chili overdose. “I’m sure if you asked, McCall could turn up some neighborhood bully for you to intimidate and fill up the time that way.”

“Right, and I thought we were trying to limit the damage these days,” Laura says dryly. Then she leans back and points her straw at Peter. “I think it’s just all those people, and they’re not just walking around, they’re really scrubbing down the place, and just standing outside, you know, you can smell it—smell _us_ getting wiped out of there. You know what I mean.”

“Just because I do doesn’t mean I don’t still think it’s ridiculous to just stand there on the sidelines and brood about it,” Peter retorts. He absently takes a bit of tendon that Stiles has just dropped into his bowl and eats it, then points his chopsticks right back at Laura. “You’re falling right into the trap of every other werewolf from the beginning of time, chasing your own tail instead of sinking your teeth into meat you can take home.”

Laura makes a face at him, with a little hint of fang, but she doesn’t otherwise reply, which basically means she’s letting him win the argument. Derek suddenly realizes that he’s been staring this whole time, and then he catches Cora gesturing at him. When she’s got his attention, she makes a ‘what is _wrong_ with you’ motion and then rolls her eyes and tips up her bowl to drink the broth.

“Well, if you want, you could come over and see what Lydia and I are doing,” Stiles says. “I mean, it’s…a lot of math, but I could…try and explain, and maybe it’d at least show that we’re making progress? Not that that’s going to help with the descenting territory thing but, um, it’d be…distracting?”

The thing is that Laura and Peter don’t usually have helpful conversations like this. They _help_ each other, they’re pack and family, and they’ve mostly gotten over Laura’s rocky start as alpha where she almost ditched an invalid Peter and Peter tried to maul her when he got better enough to realize that. But that doesn’t mean they’re civil about it. Or, for that matter, poking at each other like it’s all just teasing and not subjects they’ve come close to challenging each other over before.

Derek hasn’t really seen them interact too much since Peter moved in with Stiles, he suddenly realizes. He’s overheard the odd phone call, and both of them have mentioned that getting some space has made some things easier. And Cora’s joked a lot about Stiles being Peter’s crack. But it’s…different to see his family now, still one pack but coming together from different places than they used to.

He hasn’t actually seen too much of them coming together anyway. He’s been off on his own a lot, and when he has been back, he hasn’t had the time or chance to just sit with them like this. They’re all spread out now, and he thinks they tend to see each other when he’s out on a job.

“…for the holiday? Or did you get booked somewhere again?” Laura’s asking him.

Derek jerks his head up, then fends off a bean sprout that Cora flicks at him. “What? Are you talking about Christmas?”

“Yeah, Stiles and Peter just said they’re coming down early since grad school’s got a different semester schedule,” Laura says. “Are you working?”

“No idea, haven’t booked that far out,” Derek says, and then, because she keeps staring at him, he sighs and takes out his phone. “I can block it off, I guess. Not a lot of people want to film around the winter solstice anyway.”

Stiles makes a stifled noise, the booth creaking a little as he hops in place, and then he blushes madly. “What?” he says defensively. “No, really, what? He’s been living with us for three months and I still have no idea whether he’s a freelance secret agent or a freelance model or a freelance wolfman sighting generator, okay? For all that I get from his luggage, he could be any of those plus anything else that just requires clean underwear and a checking account.”

“You’ve been in his underwear drawer?” Cora says.

“No! No, he just—he mail-orders them and I pick up the packages! From the porch! Because I’m usually home before Peter since he’s always stopping off to maul some omega!” Stiles says, going even redder. “I always put packages through a full curse scan, you never know when some asshole’s pissed off that you marked up his journal submission for basic grammar and hideously translated Mi-Go.”

“He’s a freelance videographer,” Laura says, snorting. Then she raises her brows. “You seriously didn’t know?”

“Well, _I_ didn’t know,” Peter says, and he looks and smells more than a little irked about that. “I thought you were still trying to make it as a voice actor.”

Then he frowns. He cocks his head, and then sighs and grabs the back of Derek’s coat, hauling Derek up just as Laura starts kicking Derek’s legs and hissing at him to stop trying to duck out of sight. Derek can’t free himself from either of them without flipping the table, and everyone gets annoyed when he gets them kicked out for that, so he just shoves himself back up and then grabs his noodles and snarls into them.

“Pretty sure that was more like cheap sound effects for when people need wild animal noises,” Cora mutters.

“Okay, are you all done?” Derek mutters.

“Videographer’s cool,” Stiles says, and then fidgets awkwardly with his chopsticks when Derek looks over. Nobody yanks him up when he starts sinking under the table. “I mean, it makes total sense if you’re somebody who presents special optics problems to the public, then just control the optics. And narrative. And, um, anyway, I’m not sure if you were worried about people knowing, but—”

Then again, nobody in their right mind takes on Peter when he’s silently tracing spirals in the air behind Stiles’ head. “I wasn’t worried, I just…camera’s expensive and they’ll reimburse you for renting anyway, don’t see why I need to keep it in the house where I’m probably going to end up getting blood on it,” Derek says.

“Oh, come on, you haven’t been attacked _once_ when you’ve been staying over with us,” Stiles says indignantly. Then he settles back, just as Peter’s eyes start to glow, and Peter has to hastily stick his claws into some herbs to give himself a reason to have them out. Stiles still looks a little dubious, and signals for the waiter to bring Peter a fresh iced coffee—Peter _will_ put off murder to finish a coffee, if it’s good enough quality—as he goes on. “Inside, I mean. Okay, there was that time at the grocery, and that misunderstanding with the Miskatonic special courier, but that was on the porch, and anyway, I think my wards are pretty tight.”

“I wasn’t saying that,” Derek says. “I just don’t keep the gear in between jobs, and since I didn’t have to ask to stow that or anything, it just didn’t seem like a big deal.”

“Well, it’s not a big _deal_ , but it’s kind of interesting.” For a second, Cora almost sounds sympathetic. And then she shoves the last summer roll into her mouth. “For you.”

Laura kicks Cora. Stiles eyes the two of them as they shuffle back and forth on the bench, having some kind of slap-fight under the table, and then clears his throat. “So what kind of film do you work on? Original programming? News? You know, that makes sense of needing to move around a lot, and being out at odd hours, and—”

Derek stuffs some noodles in his mouth, even though he knows he’s got to answer. And that he’s sitting with a bunch of werewolves and a guy who’s making a career out of interpreting alien languages that are half-gibberish and half-possession. He’s kind of a wishful thinker sometimes, and he knows it’s stupid. “Horror.”

“—and even an excuse for fake blood that’s not really fake!” Stiles says, not missing a beat. Then he blinks hard. “Horror?”

“Yeah. That and paranormal stuff.” Derek shrugs. “It’s popular, there are a lot of projects, and there aren’t that many people who are actually good at shooting in low light on a budget.”

“Oddly, I think I approve the theory behind it,” Peter says after a moment. He swaps out his iced coffee with the waiter and takes a sip, and then looks at Derek, who’s still getting over the actual _sincerity_ in Peter’s voice. “On the other hand, I thought you’d worked on that self-destructive streak of yours. Have you vetted this at all? Or even thought about the risk?”

Never mind, Peter’s still Peter. “It’s a _job_ , Peter,” Derek says. “It’s not like I’m going around chasing celebrities and hoping I’m going to get famous, it’s just something so I can earn some—”

Cora holds up her hand. “I think he meant how you moved away from here so you’d stop running into stuff that’d get you killed, only now you’re exploring haunted houses and hanging with a guy who’s got cosmic horror on tap—”

“In a controlled environment with research board oversight and fail-safes,” Stiles snaps. “Which is at _work_ and not in my actual living and sleeping space, because I don’t like to get dragged before Azathoth in my PJs anymore than you do.

“Besides, I don’t take the _real_ ones,” Derek says, snapping too. He loves his family, he does, but every single time. They always end up having the same discussion, whether or not he’s really _safe_ , and sometimes he almost gets why Scott runs head-first into danger, because then at least people know he’s in danger and aren’t always asking him that question. “I’m not that stupid.”

“Well, okay, it’s cool,” Laura says, shooting looks at the others. She leans over and tries to ruffle Derek’s hair, and then looks hurt when he jerks back. Yeah, she’s trying to protect him but trying to protect him just makes Cora and Peter think he’s the kind of person who needs to be watched all the time.

And the irritating part was that Peter was starting to ease off that some since Derek started crashing with him and Stiles. He’s been distracted with Stiles and denning, and aside from a couple times when Derek accidentally triggered Stiles’ wards—which admittedly deserved a scolding, if not the light mauling—Peter has mostly just stuck to reminding Derek to leave expected return times so they know if a hunter’s grabbed Derek again. But now Peter’s doing things like checking whether Derek is clear on them not going into the family home while it’s being fumigated, and…“Derek, I’m not saying you can’t do it, but I just want to be clear that you’re not bringing home extra baggage,” Peter says. “Just whose authority are you taking it on that these are the fake ones? Because historically, you’ve been a _terrible_ judge of what constitutes a real psychic danger and what doesn’t.”

“And currently, he gets scanned by my sigil work every time he walks in and out, and I’d get a ping, so if this is coming from some weird worry that I’m gonna catch his possession cooties, that’s a no-go,” Stiles says sharply, twisting around to look at Peter. 

Peter blinks hard, then hastily sucks in a breath. “Well, of course your spellcasting is sound, there’s no doubt about that.”

Cora nudges Derek with her foot, then rolls her eyes when he looks at her. He makes a face and tips his head at Peter, who might currently be making sorry-eyes at Stiles while smelling weirdly excited, but who’s not going to miss somebody mocking him. “This is why I wasn’t going to talk about it,” Derek mutters. “And _sure_ , not saying I can’t do it. Just saying if I keep doing it, I’m probably going to get possessed again and somebody’s going to have to—”

“I’d just like to know that you’re coming back when you say you’re coming back, and that you’ll be doing it in good condition, Derek,” Peter says, with uncharacteristic bluntness. He’s still coming down from his and Stiles’ flirting moment, but when Derek looks over, Peter appears to mean it. He’s not saying it to get a reaction from Derek or just to get it on record—he looks genuinely frustrated. “I haven’t been checking up on that lately, by the way, and I was under the impression that that suited both of us.”

Derek starts to tell Peter that it was never really Peter’s job to check on him, anyway. Then he stops.

“So…this is an actual permanent thing now?” Cora pipes up. “You’re not just crashing till they kick you out?”

“Well, he’s got his own closet,” Stiles says. For some reason he sounds offended. “And part of the meat freezer.”

“We don’t actually have to eat that much meat,” Derek says, exasperated himself. He picks up a sprig of mint and eats it, and for that he earns an eye-roll from Laura.

“Okay, look, Derek’s got a job, he’s satisfied with it, he’s _not_ an idiot and he has all his memories back now, so can we just move on?” Laura adds. She does try to be a decent big sister, he’ll give her that, even if a lot of the time it clashes with how she takes on alphahood.

Cora shrugs and holds out her hand for the chili paste, which Stiles hands to her, and for a moment it really looks like they just might. And then…“If we’re all confident in Derek’s fate, and we’ve made that mistake before,” Peter mutters.

Derek drops the hand he’d been reaching towards his drink. “Since when do you worry about me anyway?”

“Since—you are looking me in the face _right now_ and you’re asking that?” Peter says, sliding quickly from startled to annoyed.

“Hey, Melissa texted me,” Laura says loudly, holding up her phone. Then she snarls, and when Derek and Peter start, wiggles the phone at them. “Somebody’s been in our house.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nyarlathotep, a particularly evil Cthulhu Mythos God (cosmic horror crossed with a Loki attitude) is typically accompanied by the sound of flutes.
> 
> Deep Ones are a frog-fish race from the Cthulhu Mythos who often interbreed with humans. The resulting offspring end up gradually transforming into Deep Ones, and a warning sign of the transformation is a desire to be in/near water.
> 
> I know normal oak trees don't put out runners, but for a Nemeton taking cues from tentacle monsters, runners seem like a logical progression.
> 
> No comment on whether the current Randolph is the same as the Randolph Carter from Lovecraft's Dreamlands stories.
> 
> Azathoth is an Outer God of the Cthulhu Mythos and dreamers run the risk of being forcibly detoured to his court.


	4. Chapter 4

“I think we should go in,” Laura says, about forty-five minutes later, as they stand a couple feet from the back porch and watch the Miskatonic people carry out bucket after bucket of watery, rotten-vegetable-smelling…’organic matter.’

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Stiles starts. “I mean, listen, I totally get the invasion aspect and psychological violation aspect but I think the need to rescent could maybe wait till they’ve confirmed that the slime doesn’t have cross-generational mutagenic properties—”

Peter just skips straight to looking disgusted. “Why would you want to go in there when they still haven’t figured out where all the parts of those filthy hunters have gone?”

Chris Argent is standing half-inside the back doorway, talking to Melissa. He’s close enough to hear, but when Derek checks, the man doesn’t even skip a beat as he and Melissa pick through a tray containing a waterlogged wallet and its algae-smeared contents with long metal pincers. Derek shrugs and glances back just in time to catch Stiles making one of those half-disbelieving, half-intrigued faces of his. The one that means if Derek looks any lower, he’s going to catch Stiles’ hand creeping towards Peter’s belly or back pocket, whichever is conveniently nearer.

“You know, they probably weren’t actually filthy when they went in, the hotel checkout records say the maid had to replace all the bathroom samples,” Stiles mutters, going for Peter’s stomach in this case. He steps up next to Peter and half-heartedly hides the belly-rubbing by bringing his other arm around to show them all his phone. “You know how I feel about you and that word and how you just drop it into random conversation and my dad is literally right _there_.” 

For a guy who’s still insecure enough about his werewolf knowledge that he’s constantly mentioning it, Stiles actually is pretty close to werewolf instincts in a few areas. The whole physical possessive-reassurance thing—when he gropes Peter like that, Derek’s pretty sure he doesn’t notice how Peter relaxes. Just how Peter starts to smirk and lean in. “But they are filthy, Stiles,” Peter purrs. “Filthy, trespassing would-be murderers—”

“Who somehow got past all of our protections _again_ , and if it wasn’t for this sudden three-headed, _carnivorous_ frog infestation, yeah, would’ve tried to kill us,” Laura says sharply.

It is kind of a weird time to be flirting, even aside from how Peter and Stiles do it. On the other hand, Derek’s not big on going into the house when that there is the tenth bucket of hunter ‘organic material’ that’s come out. “We should figure out how many there were,” he says.

“Oh, there were three, and we’ll need the DNA tests to confirm, but based on the…feeding pattern, right?” Melissa says, looking back into the house as John calls out to her. “Right. Based on that, John’s pretty confident they were all down in the tunnel.”

“And we recovered three sets of personal items,” Chris says, jiggling the tray.

“And I thought frogs eat insects, so aren’t they already carnivorous?” Cora says.

Laura’s eyes don’t go red and her fangs don’t come out, but just because you’re a werewolf doesn’t mean those are the only tells you’ve got. Derek might not live with Laura anymore, but he still knows her well enough to recognize the way she suddenly stills, even before the aggravation hits her scent.

He’s still not the quickest—Peter is, stepping away from Stiles, with an exaggerated sigh that makes it clear to everyone how much it is _not_ his responsibility to intervene with the overwrought alpha. Even though…even though he’s sliding right between Laura and the rest of them, even Chris, and the way he does it, it’s just like how Derek remembers Peter running interference with Derek’s mother. Peter didn’t do that often, usually preferring to get out the popcorn, but he’d do it whenever he thought Derek’s mother was putting pack pride over survival. As haughty as Peter can come off, at the end of the day he’d rather live.

And Laura’s not their mother in a lot of ways, but especially in that way, where she’s just as willing to dump tradition as Peter is if it’ll better protect them. Since she took over the pack, keeping it together’s been her top priority, to the point that that’s really why Derek moved out—sure, Beacon Hills has been a shitshow for him since he was a teenager, but it was getting to the point that, for his own safety, he could never left the house, or he’d have to leave it for good. And he’s not a house pet.

“They’re dead, Laura,” Peter says in a very calm, low voice.

“Yeah, sure, so we think, and that’s our goddamn house,” Laura says back in a voice that’s just as calm and low, but flatter, more obviously forced. “ _Again_. We’ve been saved by fucking _frogs_ , Peter. And don’t tell me how great it is that for once we lucked out.”

It’s tense. Cora’s shut up and circled back so that she’s semi-behind Derek, and for once not looking angry about being the shortest, lightest-built one of their generation. Stiles has his lips pressed together and one hand wrapped tightly around his phone, eyes darting between Laura and Peter. And those two…Laura’s angry, but so is Peter. Which is kind of a surprise to see, since he always seems to have expected things to go the way they did and just thinks the rest of them are slow at catching up, but he’s angry and he’s angry because he feels threatened too. Derek can see that, looking at his uncle, and it’s—a surprise that kind of feels like it shouldn’t be a surprise. Peter has the worst way of showing it but he cares about their family and Derek knows that. Derek’s just not used to—to seeing that _in_ Peter. The worry.

“It actually looks like they were just inside the tunnel, they might not have gotten very far,” Scott suddenly says. Showing up out of nowhere, for the purposes of all the other werewolves, and Jesus, but Derek really wishes the guy would be that sneaky when they’re all relying on him to solo break-in somewhere important. It would’ve saved at least three nice jackets of Derek’s. “Oh, sorry, I just heard…so, um, Mom, Jordan wanted to ask you whether you wanted the body bags at all or if we were just going to put police stickers on the buckets.” 

“Why does _he_ get to go into our house?” Cora pipes up. “Yeah, even the tentacle mutants love him, but last I checked, he’s still not actually on the local law’s payroll.”

Peter and Laura pivot on Cora in a united stare of irritation. Then Laura walks over and slings her arm around Cora’s shoulders, pushing her off, while Peter turns and pulls an apologetic face for Melissa. “My niece is a barbarian, as you’re well aware,” he starts.

“I wasn’t actually inside, I just came up from around the—” Scott says, interrupting whatever a bemused Melissa had been about to say. He takes a step back along the porch and gestures around the corner. “We found venting holes back along the tunnel and Quint and I were helping the team map those out.”

“Venting holes?” Laura repeats dubiously.

Scott makes vague gestures with his hands, which the squirrel sitting on his shoulder mimics with its tail tentacles. Derek knows from Stiles that it’s unusual when Cthulhic mutants _don’t_ get more intelligent, but one, Scott’s pet isn’t supposed to be one, tentacles aside, and two, it’s not so much the increased intelligence that is eerie so much as how the squirrel seems to have taken on Scott’s personality, right down to the quizzical way they both cock their heads at Laura. “For the frogs to come out? They can breathe through their skin, but that still means you need air to get through the soil.”

“This is starting to sound like a planned assault, as least as far as the wildlife is concerned,” Peter says. He’s being sarcastic, so he’s just as startled as the rest of them when Stiles suddenly perks up.

“Oh, I bet it totally was, this is _classic_ Deep One maneuvering, burrow in from the nearest underground reservoir and then explode from below. The only thing we’re missing is the shoggoth involvement, but I’m guessing if the Nemeton’s taking notes from that, it realized that it doesn’t need a separate tunneler, what with its control of the root network and…um.” Stiles doesn’t exactly withdraw, but he starts to fidget with his phone, and then reaches back to grab Peter as Peter starts to draw up into a defensive posture beside him. “I mean. I’m not saying the Nemeton’s out to get you, too, or even that this really was ‘planned’ in the sense of conscious decision-making, lots of natural phenomena end up looking planned…”

“I just want to know what’s going on in there, if I can’t see for myself,” Laura says. She’s sharp about it, but making an effort to keep herself out of any kind of aggressive stance. And when she does move, it’s towards Scott and Melissa. “Look, we’ve been standing outside our own _house_ for twenty minutes now and nobody’s answered my questions, and—”

It’s going to be another one of those arguments between her and Melissa about immediate pack versus preventing the greater public from noticing what’s going on, just going by how Melissa barely avoids an eyeroll and comes down the steps to meet Laura. Derek backs out of their way, jerking his chin at Cora to follow Laura—it’s not that he doesn’t want to support his sister, but Peter’s also pivoting after Laura now and if Melissa gets fed up, she tases Cora less than the rest of them—and finds himself standing near Chris, who’s also come down.

“Like Scott said, doesn’t actually look like they got near your house,” Chris mutters. He smells concerned and he’s definitely tracking Laura and Peter’s every move around Melissa, but his hands are still holding the tray and not going for any weapons.

“So what, them sneaking past you isn’t a big deal?” Derek says.

Chris makes a face, while his scent goes a little aggravated. “No, and it is, and for the record, they’re not anybody connected with my family. Or any hunter family.”

Derek raises an eyebrow. “First-gen?”

“Goddamn weekenders, if I had to guess. They didn’t have a single protective charm on them,” Chris snorts. “Unless the frogs ate those too.”

“Then how did they even get into the preserve?” Derek asks, turning more seriously towards the other man. “There’s our protections, and Deaton’s, and yours, and whatever the Nemeton is on top of that, and they just—walked past all of that?”

“Look, I don’t—we haven’t even found all the body parts yet. I know it’s your house, I’d be pissed if it was mine, but you know how long this can take to figure out,” Chris says. He lifts one hand and rubs at the side of his face, pulling down the skin around his eyes so that Derek can see that they’re going a little bit bloodshot. “Melissa’s working on it, so’s John, I guess Stiles is now too…”

Derek looks at the other man for a few seconds, trying to figure out what it is that’s bugging him about Chris, and then he pegs it: the man sounds harassed. As if—as if he really feels like he owes Derek answers at some point. Derek’s used to working with Chris now, but that’s one thing, while actually believing that Chris is doing it to help him and not because Chris doesn’t want Melissa to kick him out of town is another.

“Anyway, we’re working on it,” Chris finishes up. He rubs at his face again, checks on where Melissa and Laura are with their arguing—Laura’s making her usual point about the family’s rep as serial murderhouse people, Melissa’s pointing out that that’s why cooperating with the cover-up is _helpful_ —and then does that hunch-and-head jerk people do when they’re suddenly remembering something. “Oh, yeah. Didn’t have anything at home, but when we were in there checking around, found this.”

That’s when he pulls out one of the strings of anti- _mara_ amulets Deaton made up after Derek’s demon-puppet stint. He’s got them all folded up in his hand and when he passes them over to Derek, he tips the tray for a second to semi-hide what they’re doing. Which would work completely fine if, for some reason, Scott’s pet mutant squirrel hadn’t chosen right then to jump down onto the tray from above.

Where the hell the squirrel came from, Derek doesn’t even know, since Scott’s over with his mom, trying to soothe Laura’s feathers to Melissa’s tough realist talk. But its furry ass slaps down onto the tray with enough force to send the driver’s licenses and keys and other things flying out of it.

Chris swears and drops the amulets early so he can grab the tray with both hands. He manages to save that plus a couple items, while the squirrel, clinging to the tray and looking very alarmed at the mess it’s just made, snags all of the rest out of the air with its tail-tentacles. Still swearing, Chris rocks back on his heels and glares at the squirrel. “What the—”

“Quint!” Scott calls, and then he rushes over and scoops up the squirrel. “Oh, hey, how’d you get all the way over here? Um, no, look…okay, c’mon, drop those, they haven’t been officially bagged and tagged yet…oh! Oh, good, so at least you’ve got that now?”

That last part is to Derek, because when Chris went for the tray, Derek grabbed the amulets and in the process they fell out of the inconspicuous coil Chris had made and got strung out. And Derek was busy winding them back up and probably wouldn’t gotten away with it if Scott hadn’t loudly commented on them.

Heads turn. Laura and Peter suddenly tense, while Cora takes a step towards Derek and then takes a side-step to catch Scott by the elbow. “Is my brother possessed _again_?” she hisses, her scent full of worry and anger and fear. “And you didn’t _tell_ us?”

* * *

“I’m not detecting any malevolent spirits,” Deaton announces, frowning at the crystal ball, dowsing rod, and bowl of salt in front of him.

Beside him, Stiles hunches over the edge of the counter and rocks on his stool and presses his face into his hand. “Well, because he’s not possessed. My scan just checked everything from kitsune to Mi-Go, just in case, and that’s one hundred percent Derek body with Derek mind in it. Unless Derek was possessed way, way before I ever met him, but everything matches up with the guy who’s got the second bedroom at my and Peter’s place.”

“Because I’m not possessed!” Derek snaps, for what feels like the fiftieth time. “I told all of you! I’m just having weird dreams!”

“Look, on the one hand, I wanna be relieved, but on the other, we went through this last time. That’s the _first_ thing a possessed person is gonna tell you,” Cora says. Though she’s standing close enough to prod Derek in the chest, so she must not actually think Stiles and Deaton could be wrong about this. “And also, last time, it all started because you would only tell Scott about the weirdness and _Scott_ was a complete _idiot_ who didn’t _tell_ anybody who could actually _help_ —”

Melissa had to stay back and deal with the crime scene, but she must have given Chris his marching orders, because even before Scott has the chance to look hangdog, Chris clears his throat. But Stiles gets in ahead of him, since the man just skips straight to spinning around on his stool and poking Cora in the arm with his phone. “Hey, wait a second,” Stiles says. “He told Scott _and_ Chris here, and I know this is one of those old-history things where I’m stepping in without the full lowdown on all the crap you guys did to each other, but still, that’s a fact so it can’t possibly be all on Scott—”

“No, it’s on the fact that my damn brother never wants to tell me when he’s having a problem,” Laura snarls at Derek. “Great, so you’re not possessed! So way to tell us that you could’ve been!”

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t think I was! I—I’m crashing at their place!” Derek snarls back, waving at Stiles and Peter, who so far seems to be sitting this one out…though oddly, he doesn’t look very amused. “Have you been there? Do you know how much bizarre magical shit is floating around? I have to chant something just to get a screwdriver out, if anything serious was happening they would’ve noticed!”

“…screwdriver?” Scott mutters, in the embarrassed whisper of somebody who knows this is the last time and place to be curious, but who can’t help it anyway.

Stiles makes some of his flappy gestures. “I was researching Tindalos for Lydia, and long story short, locked down the toolbox so nobody could add in unexpected angles. Because Peter was, um, doing…spontaneous midnight repairs…”

“He was denning, wasn’t he?” Cora snickers, and then she sobers up as Peter directs a soft rumble her way.

“Derek, I’m just trying to make sure you’re okay,” Laura says. She jerks up her arm as if to grab him, then twists away at the last minute, turning the movement into a short circle that she paces around Peter and then ends back in front of Derek. “I just—I don’t understand why you never come to us for help. You’re always going to Scott, or to an _Argent_ , or—or anybody but your actual family and—”

“Because your idea of helping is shoving me in the basement until you work something out with Deaton or the McCalls or the Argents and if it’s going to be like that, I might as well just ask them myself,” Derek tells her. He’s doing his damnedest to keep his temper, but every time Laura gets upset at him for something like this, he just feels like—like he’s just another goddamn beta to her. Like he didn’t grow up spending the first part of his life tagging around after her, trusting in her and their mom to do what was best and make sure he never got hurt. To just _fix_ it. And they both know now that that’s not how it works. “You were just as fucking bad back there with our house.”

“Derek—what—I don’t even know what that means,” Laura says, shaking her head. “That’s our _house_.”

“Yeah, and I’m your brother, and if there’s something in my fucking head, no, I don’t want to have it make me hurt people, but I also don’t want to be treated like a fucking lab rat. You get mad when people get into our house, even when it turns out that saved us from another kill attempt, but you seem just fine with people dicking around with my mind,” Derek snaps.

Laura breathes in sharply, and right then Derek knows that if he doesn’t get out of the room, they’re going to fight, and it’s going to get out of control. So he leaves.

Every instinct he’s got is screaming against it, especially when he gets as far as he can without turning his back on Laura and then has to pivot sideways to walk around a gurney. And even the thinking part of him is crouched down, wondering if Laura’s going to take it as a step too far anyway, since what he’s doing has to be yanking at every bit of alpha in her, begging for slap-down.

But Derek gets all the way out to the front of Deaton’s clinic without getting jumped. He pauses at the counter and listens, but everybody’s heartbeat is still clustered in the backroom. They’re talking, or at least not doing anything strenuous; Deaton’s privacy wards won’t let him hear what’s being said. Still, it does look like they’re going to let him, the guy who they’re so worried about being possessed, walk all the way out.

Derek’s been standing at the front door for at least five minutes, staring into the parking lot and idly wondering whether it’s paranoid to think Melissa wouldn’t rely just on Chris and would have sent other back-up, now that she’s also got John and Miskatonic University on speed-dial, when somebody clears their throat behind him.

“Don’t shatter the glass, nephew, I think we’ve already done enough today to remind people we’re just animals,” Peter sighs. He pauses just long enough to give Derek’s hackles time to go down, and then eases up behind Derek’s left shoulder. “For what it’s worth, we’re all agreed that you’re not dealing with a case of possession, even me.”

Derek snorts, then puts one thumb up. He doesn’t look back at Peter. Just keeps looking out the door. “I know she’s pissed at me, I’ll talk to her—I’ll talk to her. I’m just making sure we don’t maul each other in front of your boyfriend, okay?”

“Well, that’s very considerate of you, though I do think it’s a little late for that,” Peter says tartly. “Despite every effort I’ve made, he’s well aware of our shortcomings as a family.”

“So why are you talking to me?” Derek mutters. Just past the first two rows of cars, something moves and he starts up, grabbing the door handle—but it’s just a squirrel. He squints and makes sure it’s not Scott’s pet, then suppresses a sigh as he leans his forehead against the glass. For a second there he’d actually thought he might have something to chase after, and yeah, that would’ve been a relief. Because he’s like that. “Shouldn’t you be back there apologizing, then? Or what, do you need to go swap shirts?”

Peter growls a little under his breath and Derek instinctively unsheathes his claws. They make tiny ringing noises against the metal door handle, and then again as he forces them back in. He’s pissed off Laura and now he’s got Peter mad at him, and so much for making sure he could get into at least one of the two places where he keeps things. And since it’s Beacon Hills, he’ll probably have to skip the hotels and go beg Scott for the spare bedroom, if he doesn’t want to end up chained up in somebody’s basement.

“Derek.” Then Peter takes a long, exasperated breath. “Derek, why are you doing this? Do you honestly want us to throw you to the hunters?”

“What? No, what the hell makes you think that?” Derek says, turning around.

“Well, hiding your problems, going to Scott McCall and Chris Argent when you decide it’s time to do something, and then yelling at your sister when she wants to make sure that you’re in your right mind,” Peter says dryly. When Derek starts to reply, he raises his hand. “Yes, I realize that that could very well just mean you’re being an idiot, so let me rephrase my question: why are you being an idiot?”

For a couple seconds Derek stands there and…honestly, waits for Peter to go off on him. Or at least spring the rest of the ego-takedown, because that is way too tame for Peter. And also Peter’s cocking his head like he’s actually waiting for an answer from Derek, when usually Peter’s satisfied with making sure his verbal skewer went all the way in and then moves on.

“Because I knew you were all going to act like this,” Derek finally says, because patiently waiting Peter is worse than murder-by-sarcasm Peter. It’s that feeling that if Derek doesn’t come up with something, Peter’s going to spy on him even more than usual till Derek spills it. “You’d—just—flip out and—”

“You’re not chained up. Or drugged. Or even held at taser-point,” Peter says, crossing his arms over his chest. Then he uncrosses them to slide one hand up and down the side of his face. “All right, look, I realize in the past we’ve resorted to extreme measures, but that was in different circumstances—you’d actually _attacked_ people, in broad daylight, and Chris wasn’t seeing Melissa yet—”

“I _know_. I know that you had to, I know that wasn’t—if I thought it was that bad, I would’ve said something,” Derek snaps. “It’s been—it’s only been two dreams, and it just started yesterday, and we had the frogs and the house going on at the same time, okay?”

Peter looks as if he’s debating whether to pinch the bridge of his nose or just move onto hitting Derek, but in the end he settles for sighing heavily into his hand. “Then why didn’t you just explain that? Or do you—Derek, do you really think that we’d drug and chain you just for any kind of psychological issue?”

Derek opens his mouth and then realizes he’s not exactly sure what he’s about to say. That might fly with Laura, who eventually forgives him out of her own issues with thinking she’s not a great alpha, but not with Peter, who’ll take anything Derek says and twist it. So Derek hesitates and, well, it’s _Peter_ , so that doesn’t fly either.

“You actually do.” Peter’s head comes up and he gives Derek a long stare. He looks surprisingly disturbed. “You do. Derek. You’re _fam—_ ”

“It’s not like I’m really blaming you for it, okay?” Derek says. “It makes sense. It’s just it’s not actually fun and I just…I didn’t want…”

Didn’t want to be in this exact situation, where Peter’s looking at him like Derek just burned down the house again, with that shade of disbelieving horror in the man’s face. They’ve been a lot better lately, even with Peter’s denning instincts going possessive all over the place. Derek knows he’s long since outstayed his welcome in Beacon Hills, but going without any pack nearby had been a lot harder than he’d thought, and when Peter had said Derek could stay with him and Stiles, it’d been a relief. A much bigger one than Derek had even expected—he hadn’t actually planned to stay with them for three straight months, with just the occasional weekend job. 

But once he’d dropped off his stuff, it’d just felt—like a break that he didn’t want to come back from. Even with Stiles’ eldritch magic research all over the place and Peter constantly fussing over the security, it’d felt more comfortable than Derek could remember in a very long time. So yeah, he hadn’t wanted it to end.

“For the record,” Peter says in an icy tone, and Derek braces himself, mentally estimating how expensive it’ll be to rent temporary storage once they get back to Peter and Stiles’ rental. “None of that was _fun_ for us either. I have my sadistic impulses, I’ll admit, but they have nothing to do with ensuring that we aren’t massacred by one of our own.”

“Yeah, well…yeah,” Derek mutters, staring at a point just past Peter’s shoulder. “Look, I didn’t think it was going to be that bad but I’ll—just—”

“Work with Scott and Chris? And you think that pair’s _less_ likely to overreact?” Peter says.

It’s not going to help a damn thing, but Derek’s temper flares before he can help it. “Well, actually, they didn’t this time, seeing as I’m not drugged, and anyway, at least then you don’t have to worry about it. Honestly, did you _want_ me to tell you? I mean aside from the whole make-sure-I-don’t-kill-everyone thing, do you actually care?”

Peter’s eyes flare blue. The tips of his fangs peek out from his lips for a moment, and then he shakes his head roughly. “Are you honestly asking me that? Are you—I can’t decide whether you’re exceptionally dense or if this is a warning sign I should be noting, because I did think you had some basic intelli—Derek, you’re _living_ with us.”

“Yeah, because I asked and you felt sorry for me,” Derek says.

“Because you’re my pack and you’re the most idiotic—but you’re still _pack_ , you complete ass of a fool,” Peter snaps. He starts aggressively towards Derek, who spreads his shoulders. But almost in the same breath, Peter’s spinning away, stalking angrily back into the clinic. “In what hallucination of yours have I _ever_ let you have something of mine just because I felt _sorry_ for you? You’re staying under the same roof as my mate, you idiot!”

Well, when Peter puts it like that…yeah, it does sound pretty stupid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mi-Go are fungoid aliens from outer space who have a habit of kidnapping people, removing their minds, and imprisoning them in metal tubes while the Mi-Go puppet the vacated body around. See Lovecraft's _The Whisperer in the Dark_.
> 
> Tindalos is the origin for the Hounds of Tindalos, who are sort of a Cthulhu Mythos riff on the Furies and are interdimensional monsters who can attack via angles (but not curves!). They specialize in relentlessly hunting down time travelers.


	5. Chapter 5

Derek ends up sitting on the bench just outside the clinic.

Beacon Hills is small enough that he could just walk back to Stiles’ dad’s rental, but with his dreams and the frog infestation and surprise dead hunters on top of pissing off every single living member of his family, he figures he’s had enough bad ideas for the week. He’ll wait for a ride from somebody else. Which is why he’s sitting there, since if he just texts Scott, the man will come out and want to see how he’s feeling and whether they can all talk it out right then and there, and Derek’s having a hard enough time figuring out how he’s going to ask Scott to crash in the spare bedroom without bringing that on.

“So, um, hey…and hey, okay, so I _can_ sneak up on werewolves,” Stiles says, hastily retreating behind the glass door. When Derek sits back down, he gingerly pushes the door open again, easing around it with his phone-hand out front. “So.”

“Are Peter and Laura arguing about whose turn it is to deal with me?” Derek mutters.

Stiles pauses and for a second Derek thinks the man’s going to go back inside. “Well, if you honestly are interested in that one, Laura said something about being responsible and Peter snarled at her in what I _think_ is the dominant-annoyed-possessive register, and she gave him a weird look and then started lecturing him on why he wasn’t helping with your persecution issues.”

“What?” Derek says.

“I have no idea, but on the unwanted dream thing, I do have a couple. So I realize you’ve had some traumatic experience in the past, and I am not here to judge. Although maybe to analyze, a little bit, but just so that I can properly code against the university manual for psych disturbances to pick the right deterrent ward,” Stiles goes on. He shuts the door and sort of sidles over to the bench, then awkwardly climbs onto it and perches on the armrest with his feet on the slats, looking at Derek. “So I don’t know what you and Peter argued about, but as the guy primarily responsible for the magical protections where you live—”

“Scott already went through some checklist with me, and on where I live, you might want to double-check that with Peter first,” Derek says.

Stiles pauses again. When he finally speaks again, he’s dropped the twitchy air and is a lot more like the irritated, brash kid he’d been when Derek had first met him. Derek’s not really sure when Stiles stopped acting like he had seen way worse than Derek and started with the nervous dancing around, as if he’s the one who needs to make everything comfortable. But Stiles has been doing it for long enough that seeing him stop is a little disconcerting.

“Okay, first of all, Scott’s checklist is for triage, not for actual problem-solving, ‘cause I love my buddy but exorcisms are not his strong suit. Second, whatever Peter decides he needs to seal into the walls in the middle of the night with the Pnakotic-blessed caulk, it’s a joint household. That invite came from both of us, and if we’re going to throw you out, we’d do it together,” Stiles says sharply. “Not that Peter’s even talking about it. Again, I don’t know the details here, but I kind of think that’s why he came storming back in—”

“Why does he even want me around?” Derek says, turning towards the other man. “Seriously. You’re the one he’s actually settling down for, can you just figure that out? He’s spent his whole life wanting to get away from us. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Well, I don’t think it was _you_ so much as Beacon Hills, and I thought you left for basically the same reasons,” Stiles says with a frown. Then he winces and looks down at his phone. “Okay, though I think Peter didn’t get possessed as many times.”

Derek snorts. “Peter never gets possessed. That’d be careless and he doesn’t do careless.”

“Yeah, unless you’re talking about carelessly forgetting to think about whether or not I’m going to have an opinion about it when he goes and tries to take care of something so good that I won’t ever have to hear about it. Which, come to think of it, looks like a hereditary trait,” Stiles says. He peers at Derek over the top of his phone for a second, then sighs and puts the phone in his pocket. “Okay. I didn’t come out here to poke about your family. It’s your family, and even if I hate watching you guys repeatedly walk past each other despite the big, blaring neon signs to…I majored in Eldritch Horrors, not Daemonic Psychology, and if I’m gonna ding people about not going to the experts, I gotta be honest about what I’m actually an expert in.”

“They’re just weird dreams,” Derek says, guessing where this is going.

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Dreams that bother you. Dreams that bother you enough that you hit up Scott and Chris Argent for help, and listen, Scott is my then-and-now-again best bud, but again, him being a good listener doesn’t mean he knows what references to look up.”

“So what about Chris?” Derek says. “Your dad’s seeing him.”

“I’m leaving your family out of it, so it’d be nice if you did the same with mine,” Stiles says sharply. He glares at Derek till Derek grimaces and nods—that was a cheap shot—and then he rolls his eyes again. “Besides, I don’t really think it’s about the esoteric knowledge-share with Dad…and thank you _very_ much for forcing me to think about what my dad might like in pillow talk. I’m going to have to go scrub my brain now.”

“Non-Euclidean geometry doesn’t do that for you, but thinking about your dad does?” Derek says.

“The risk there is insanity, not massive lasting emotional discomfort every time Dad accidentally includes me on the wrong text thread,” Stiles says, screwing up his face. Then he shakes his head and jabs his finger at Derek. “Anyway, back to my actual point, which is if you just give me a couple details, I can probably work up a better solution to your dreams than whatever Chris gave you. No disrespect to Chris, he probably does know which reference to look up, but at the same time, being an expert isn’t just about the references, it’s about the execution, too. And in case you don’t remember, I also have firsthand experience here.”

Derek does remember. He looks across the parking lot again, thinking about walking, and then sighs. “They’re just weird.”

“And again…but they’re weird enough to bother you,” Stiles points out.

“Yeah, but I just—everybody’s making it out to be a big deal and they’re just—they’re just bothering me so far,” Derek mutters. “Look, it’s not…it wasn’t bothering you before you found out about it, was it?”

“But now I know about it, and between the good doctor and me, we have twenty something tests saying you’re the same guy who once punched me in the face and then told me you all already know about mind invasions, so it was totally okay to delegate so I could go off and get all my aftershocks out in private,” Stiles says. Which reminds Derek of why he hadn’t gone to the man in the first place, and it’s only a little to do with the fact that Stiles is sleeping with Peter, and a lot more to do with how, unlike Scott, Stiles has the memory to prove Derek is being a hypocrite. “This must be close enough to what you went through before, going by your reaction, and if it is, why don’t we just make it stop? Then you and Peter and the rest of your family can work it out without sleep deprivation handicapping you.”

Derek starts to say why that wouldn’t work and then stops himself. Because pretty much everything that people have suggested to him so far for this would work—the problem’s more what it’d leave behind for Derek to deal with afterward. But, frankly, that’s a moot point now. “You and Peter were in them. My dreams.”

Stiles is quiet for a second, but he doesn’t smell disgusted or anything. Or even really that surprised, though his heartbeat twitches for a second. “Okay, were we evil? And for Peter, obviously, by evil, I mean relative to his usual vengeful streak. Like was he abnormally evil? Incompetently evil? Stuff like that.”

“You were…not you, but you weren’t evil either. These weren’t violent or anything like that,” Derek says slowly. 

“How do you mean, we weren’t us?” Stiles says, looking very interested. “Like personality? Or in terms of body? How’d you know, anyway? Was this a lucid dream?”

“Yeah, that’s how I knew it wasn’t real,” Derek says, suddenly realizing how he’s going to duck out of giving the details while still making it look like he’s giving Stiles something to work on. “I knew it was a dream, while I was still _in_ the dream. I usually don’t. So I knew right away you two weren’t really there, it was all just made-up.”

Stiles has his phone out again and is swiping this way and that while muttering under his breath. “Right, and did you try to wake yourself up?”

“Not really, but I wasn’t in the dream for that long before I did.” Then Derek pulls the amulets that Chris had given him out of his coat pocket. He jiggles them in one hand, then shows them to Stiles. “When I was—after I got possessed, I had these nightmares for a while, where I thought they were real till I did wake up, but like I said, these weren’t like that. Which is why I keep saying they’re weird. If they were nightmares, I’d call them nightmares.”

“But even if they aren’t, they’re obviously bothering you,” Stiles says.

Derek shrugs. “Yeah, they…it’s just they’re weird, and you and Peter were in them, and I don’t normally dream about you two. I don’t normally dream, period. So if I am, with my life, I just…want to make sure it’s not a sign of something. And—look, since Peter said I could stay—”

Stiles has this tell, this very specific way he narrows his eyes, when he thinks somebody is talking down to him. He gives that look to Peter a lot, even if he seems to enjoy the process of undercutting Peter’s smug airs too much to actually object to them.

“Okay, both of you,” Derek corrects. “You’re letting me stay with you, so it’d just be…how was that conversation going to go?”

“I’m worried I’m suffering a psychic attack, do you mind if we adjust the wards on my bedroom?” Stiles says. He starts to say something else, then stops himself. Then starts again, only to stop himself with a low but distinctly frustrated noises. His hands go up and then come down, and then he drops off the arm-rest and onto the bench next to Derek, throwing up his hands again. “Okay, look, I’m probably trampling all over werewolf manners or whatever, but I just—I don’t know, Peter’s not explaining this one except to mutter about you being passive-aggressive, which is doubling down on the hypocrisy and decorating it with sparklers, and just why don’t you think you live with us?”

Derek stares at him for a second, but that doesn’t help Stiles make any more sense, and Derek’s sure he’s currently awake. “What?”

“You don’t think you live with us. I mean, you don’t use the closet, you put all your food in little plastic containers, that one time the toilet paper ran out on you, you went around the corner to buy more instead of getting a spare roll out of the hall closet—” Stiles goes on, sounding like he’s working up the kind of rant he normally saves for people who think Ithaqua and Bigfoot are the same thing when they don’t even exist in the same dimension.

“That’s because the last time I opened the closet, Peter said I almost messed up your electric pentacle thing,” Derek points out.

Stiles stutters a little. “Oh, right.” He slumps briefly, then jerks back up. “Okay, fair, but the other stuff, it’s like you still think you’re just an overnight guest. I mean, sure, you’re not added as a co-tenant on the lease, but that’s just because Peter’s still bugging me about whether we can move closer to that warehouse with the conveniently easy to break into roof he uses for challenge fights, so there’s no point when we might break the lease anyway.”

“Well…what are you saying? Are you saying I’m a—I don’t know, a roommate?” Derek says, blinking hard.

It’s Stiles’ turn to stare at Derek for a second. Actually, longer than a second, since he takes the time to shift a couple inches so he has a different angle. “Derek,” he says. He pauses as if he’s waiting for a reaction. “Derek. Peter. So he’s denning, right? Which means he’s got urges to mark out everything that he considers within his sphere of influence, right?”

“Yeah, that’s normal,” Derek says. Then he grimaces. “Okay, he kind of uses that as an excuse too, but it’s a normal…werewolf thing, even if the way he does it is…yeah.”

“Whatever, never mind Peter’s inability to stay out of the first percentile of any statistical curve having to do with extreme nastiness,” Stiles says dismissively. “The point is, he’s like that, but he not only was okay with you staying, he actually scouted places with a spare bedroom so you weren’t always on the couch. So what does that mean?”

“That he didn’t want me complaining about it?” Derek says.

Stiles slaps his hand over his face and makes an aggravated noise into it. “Derek, for—look, I’m really trying not to be that outsider guy who lectures people on their identity, nobody gets away with that except the Mi-Go and that’s because they’re basically sizing you up for a mind-swap, but—you’re _pack_.”

“Yeah,” Derek says slowly. “I was born that way. You know, since he’s my uncle, and we’re both werewolves.”

“No, not like that, like—like when Peter has his vision of what a perfect, secure, magazine-spread den looks like, he’s got me and a bed big enough so he doesn’t have any limbs hanging off when I’m doing my belly-rub thing, and a Miskatonic-grade private server so we can download all the eldritch tomes we want, _and_ there’s you,” Stiles says, still looking extremely irritated that he’s going through this with Derek. “As in, you’re _his_ pack and he gets on you for getting snatched by hunters because they’re taking you _away_ , not because it annoys him to get you back.”

So Derek…does get the point that Stiles is trying to make now. As in he understands it. He just doesn’t see it.

Stiles reads that in his face, because the other man lets out another exasperated breath and flops backward so his head hangs off the top of the bench. “He’s pissed off at you because you don’t act like pack back! He’s got this whole semi-alpha thing going now, since he’s got his own mate and den and isn’t living in Laura’s territory, but for pack you kind of need a minimum three, because a mated pair’s a mated pair and you’re not fitting into his little beta slot for you! And look, I’m not saying he’s right to just put that on you without your consent—”

“Beta ranking isn’t about asking permission, it’s—it’s hierarchy. It just is,” Derek says. His mouth says, anyway. He must be absorbing Stiles’ nervous tics about going off on unrelated academic tangents when he just does _not see it_.

“Whatever! You’re supposed to be junior beta to his senior or whatever and you’re just off doing some orphan omega thing and he’s trying to incorporate you and you just keep ignoring it and Derek, for the sake of both of our sanities, can you just _tell_ him if you’re not cool with that?” Stiles says, flipping his hands around in the air. He almost hits Derek in the face with his fingers, and then Derek just scoots out of range as Stiles’ elbow gets into it, too. “Because seriously, if I have to deal one more time with him coming back and being a raging asshole because he’s covering up rejection insecurities, I’ll—I’ll—okay, look, it’s just sometime we’re in places where we can’t just duck off and have sex, right? Like here? No-go.”

Derek opens his mouth. Then closes it. Then slouches down on the bench and wonders just when his family became a bigger deal than hunters trying to infiltrate his house only to be eaten by a horde of three-headed frogs.

Okay, so it’s his family, and that’s not really that much of a stretch, or a new one. But this specific situation—that one’s a new one.

“I mean, I get the feeling Dr. Deaton probably wouldn’t bat an eye, he has that mysteriously diplomatic act he can pull out, and Chris can’t say a thing with what I try really, really hard not to overhear when I call my dad, but—just where? In the cat room? They’re kind of judge-y, you know,” Stiles goes on. He’s calming down some, rambling himself out of his irritated mood, but he’s still giving Derek the occasional side-eye. “I’m not Scott, but. They are. Cats. They do that stare, okay? And the university’s done a century of research into it and proved there’s not an ounce of Cthulhic in them but they’re still the only earthly mammal besides people who regularly conduct trans-astral travel, so just, I’d rather not mess with them.”

The Peter-ish cat suddenly pops into Derek’s head and Derek catches himself nodding. Then makes a face, and then he has to cut off Stiles with a swipe of his hand, because it looks like Stiles is taking that as Derek needs more convincing. And Derek doesn’t, he…okay. He does see it now. What Stiles is saying is making sense of how Peter’s been acting over the last day, and if Derek is honest, of a lot of other things Peter’s said and done for longer than that, now that Derek’s sitting down and putting them all together and seeing the pattern.

It’s just that seeing it isn’t necessarily getting it. Derek can see it and understand it but he still doesn’t _get_ it.

“Look, I’ll…I’ll talk to him,” Derek finally says. “I don’t—I didn’t…I’ll just talk to him. It wasn’t that I was refusing, I just…”

“Are you going to refuse now?” Stiles says curiously, and then hastily pulls on an apologetic face. “Which is cool with me, okay, I’m just asking for purposes of being prepared for Peter.”

“I—would you be cool if I didn’t?” Derek says, looking over. “Because you’re supposed to get a say in that. Who’s pack.”

Stiles blinks sharply. He pulls himself up some, looking thoughtful, and then shrugs. “Well, yeah, I mean, you’re already staying with us, and I work you into the wards and stuff like that, so…and I don’t mind that, or you. As far as I can tell, anyway—no offense, but for a guy who’s been living with us for three months, I still don’t really know much about you. I’m not even sure if I annoy you or if that’s just your default face, to be honest.”

“You aren’t bad or anything,” Derek mutters without thinking. Contrary to what most people think, he doesn’t usually go out of his way to be rude. Sure, if he’s cornered, he doesn’t see any reason to make himself pleasant, but other than that, he doesn’t normally go after people.

“See, you say that, and knowing what I do about werewolves, I’m not positive that’s not your hierarchy talking. Or, knowing what I do about Peter, your concern about what he might spring on you three months from now when you’ve forgotten about it and are worried about something you did that annoyed him the week before,” Stiles says. When Derek grimaces, he looks knowing but it’s sympathetic, not smug. Even though he’s pretty much never Peter’s target.

He’s actually a pretty good person to know, once you get past all of the Miskatonic research, and the fact that he’s genuinely friends with Lydia Martin, and how a lot of his automatic reactions when he’s startled tend to involve horrific curses. Sometimes he is annoying, but most of the time Derek can see why Peter picked Stiles to den with. And yeah, if Derek is honest, a little part of Derek wishes he could find somebody like Stiles for himself. Derek’s life has been reasonably free of disasters and serious threats to his or his family’s lives for long enough that having that kind of relationship doesn’t look so ridiculous, and…

“Well, look, just think about what I said, would you? You don’t have to talk to Peter right away, I know you’ve got other stuff on your mind right now,” Stiles says, getting up. “And I’ll see if I can get some temporary wards on your room at Dad’s place to deal with the dreams. Sound good?”

“Yeah,” Derek says, because it does. “Sure.”

It’s just Derek who, deep in his mind, is sounding pretty terrible right now.

* * *

Once Stiles goes back inside, Derek gets off his ass and just texts Boyd to see if he’s around and can give Derek a ride back to Stiles’ father’s house. He’s not doing anything useful just sitting around at the clinic, and the people who keep coming out to talk to him could probably be spending their time better elsewhere. Might as well let them do that while he works out a couple things in peace and quiet, and Boyd’s more likely to give Derek that than anybody else currently within driving distance.

What Derek gets instead is Laura stalking out the clinic door a few minutes later, pausing by him, and going out to her car. She drives it up to the clinic and then stretches across to open the door to shotgun.

“I’m not going to yell at you,” she says, while looking and smelling and sounding as if she’s just about got her temper under control.

Derek considers his options and then hears a heartbeat approaching from behind. It’s Cora, but she gets to within a couple feet of the door, then stops. Lets out an irritated breath and then turns around and stalks back, muttering about it always being the same every time and this is why she doesn’t live with family either.

Laura’s scent spikes with anger, and then suddenly crashes as she slumps behind the wheel. She doesn’t smell…depressed, exactly, she’s still too annoyed for that, but the fight in her is definitely on the way out. “Look, if you just want to go back to Stiles’ dad’s place and rest up, I’ll drop you off,” she says, mostly to the wheel, not looking at Derek. “Stiles is still talking to Alan and Peter—”

“Yeah, doesn’t trust a druid to not pump Stiles dry,” Derek says.

His sister glances over and for a second he thinks she might smile. But then she heaves her shoulders back and tips her head over so that she can rest it against her hand, propping her elbow up against the window. “Cora’s in one of her moods, and I think I’m just going to go back to the house and see whether Melissa’s going to let me back in the damn place.”

Which means Cora and Laura are fighting. They aren’t that close, for all that they’re sisters—aside from ganging up on Derek, they aren’t really interested in the same things. Laura’s never felt that much older to Derek, but she’s nearly ten years older than Cora and before, when their mother was alive, Laura never had the patience to wait up for Cora, so they didn’t tend to hang out. But for all of that, they don’t usually fight that much; they just did their own things and went their own way. That’s why Derek figured Cora has never been as bothered about following an alpha’s lead as him or Peter, since for her, it didn’t affect her life much.

So if she and Laura are fighting, then it must have been a massive blow-up. But Peter’s not out front, and he always ends up in the middle of it when one of them is fighting with Laura, and…Derek either needs to get in the car or turn Laura down. Just standing here is getting exhaust fumes in his face while Laura’s getting angry again.

Derek presses his lips together, then slides into the front seat and pulls the door shut. Laura doesn’t do anything till he starts to look over, and then she jerks up a little and finally pulls the car away from the curb.

They’re down the road at the first intersection away from the clinic when Laura exhales. “Are you okay?”

The way she asks it, Derek almost thinks she might attack him if he answers wrong. But then he takes a breath and Laura smells frustrated, not enraged. “I don’t think I’m insane,” he says slowly.

“That’s not what I—” Laura shuts her mouth hard enough that her teeth snap. She puts her hand up to her head again, grimacing, and then breathes out sharply. “Look, Derek, I’m not trying to corner you or anything. I’m just asking how you’re feeling.”

“Yeah, and I think I’m mostly okay. They’re just dreams and I…I didn’t want this to be a big deal, all right? I don’t know what’s causing them but so far I’m not hurting people, and I…I don’t think I’m being hurt either,” Derek says. He realizes he’s absently popping his claws out and pulling them back in, and moves his hand off his knee to between his leg and the door, where Laura can’t see. “And it started at the same time as the frogs in our house and if you’re going to worry about—”

Laura suddenly lets out a snarl that seems to slap against the windshield, rattling it hard enough that Derek is surprised when it doesn’t crack. “Oh, to hell with the house. I’m starting to wonder why I was in such a goddamn hurry to rebuild it, right in the same spot. Maybe the rest of you are all right and I’m wrong and we should just ditch it.”

Derek looks sharply over at Laura. “Seriously?”

A rumble comes from her, and it’s just skating threatening. But then, just as Derek’s moved one hand down to the door handle, it stops and Laura slouches back so far that she eases off the pedals, too, and the car starts to coast. Somebody behind them honks and Laura starts, stamps down on the accelerator and then pulls back from that. Then she gives herself a shake and hits the brakes just in time to keep them from running a red light, where a bus coming in the cross-direction is clearly not about to yield.

They’re not going so fast that the jerk is bad, but it’s still enough that Derek purrs in his throat before catching himself, trying to get her to calm down. Then he grimaces and swallows hard, watching his sister’s shoulders hunch up and then slump down.

“Probably not,” Laura mutters after a long second. She rubs at the side of her face. “Probably…not. Shit. I mean, that would leave Scott the alpha in charge, and I know you’re friends with him, but…really?”

“I’m not friends with him,” Derek says. “You see him more than I do, these days.”

“Fine, whatever, you’re still his rescue buddy. You’re at least up there with Isaac on the list,” Laura says. When he snarls at her, her expression lightens, but it’s only for a second.

They drive through the intersection and then take the next right, and then get stuck behind an idling delivery truck. They could drive around it, but it’s a narrow two-lane and Derek can hear the oncoming traffic and that’s spaced close enough together to make it tricky, at least if they don’t want to get Parrish calling Laura up to ask whether, with all the murders they could at _least_ not make him disappear their speeding tickets.

Laura seems to agree, since she just lets the car sit there. “So you’re okay.”

“Yeah,” Derek says.

She doesn’t even look at him. Doesn’t do any alpha thing, no rumble, no eye-glow, nothing like that. Just tilts her head slightly, staring at the delivery truck, and her older-sister skepticism is so thick in the air that Derek spits out a sigh and sinks down in his seat.

“Well, look, I’ll keep. I’m pretty sure,” Derek finally says. He slumps a little lower, looking out the window on his side, where he can just glimpse the treetops in the preserve. “What’s Cora mad at you for?”

“Oh, usual bullshit. I’m ignoring her because I’m busy, um, _handling_ whatever’s got the authorities on our backs now instead of getting involved in whatever glitterfest she and Erica and Boyd have whipped up this time. Like they couldn’t just have a quiet weekend till the frogs were gone, at least,” Laura says. She exhales in frustration, then punches the gas when the delivery truck finally gets moving, sliding them around the truck only to have to stop at another red. “Before you ask, I texted Boyd, he said it’s really not a big deal except for them being short of cash and being alpha doesn’t mean I’m a bottomless expense account.”

Erica and Boyd actually aren’t that irresponsible these days, so much as having a bigger social life than anyone in Derek’s family that he can remember, including Peter. The two of them apparently have a sideline in party-planning that pays the rent, except Erica likes to go over the top so they periodically have cashflow issues. “Doesn’t Cora have access to her trust now?” Derek asks.

“Yeah, she does, she just.” Laura makes a face at the wheel. “Okay, I maybe said I’d go. It’s one of those speed-dating mixers Melissa and Scott set up, you know, trying to match omegas up with packs, and…does this really seem like a good time to expand? Sure, we have empty bedrooms but we also have _three-headed frogs_ in the basement.”

“I guess that’d be hard to explain, but on the other hand, were you really just going back out again?” Derek says, glancing over. Something about the way Laura’s complaining now just makes him think that the fight wasn’t so much Cora being mad at Laura as Laura getting her back up and lashing out, thinking people are calling her a bad alpha again. “You can’t just keep sleeping out in whatever tent thing Miskatonic’s got set up.”

Laura looks back. “I can’t?”

“Fine, you can. But you’re just going to get your back screwed up on a shitty bed and end up arguing with a bunch of people about how the Hounds of Tindalos aren’t actually the source of werewolf legends, because _we’re_ the source, even if we aren’t interdimensional monsters,” Derek says. Then he nods at the road, because the light’s green for them now. He waits for Laura to get through the intersection and onto a lengthy stretch of country road, and then goes on. “It won’t help, Laura. I get it, but just sitting there is just going to make you feel antsy, and the Miskatonic people aren’t the people you should be around when you’re trying not to maul anybody. It’s really not like you can do anything before they finish up and tell us who’s behind all of this.”

“I _know_ , Derek,” Laura says irritably. She smushes back in her seat, one arm straight out in front of her to hook over the top of the steering wheel. “I know, okay? I know I can’t do a damn thing.”

She’s angry, but it’s all at herself, not at Derek or at Cora. Which was probably where the fight kicked off, Derek thinks. Cora’s not the greatest at picking that sort of thing up. “It’s fucking three-headed hunter-eating frogs, Laura,” he tells her. “How were you supposed to see that coming?”

“I don’t know! I know, okay, I just—” she drops her other hand to the wheel as the car starts to weave, then lets out a burst of breath “—I just…Derek, why the hell can’t I keep shit out of our house? It’s our goddamn house and, just, God, but these days I feel like Peter has the right idea, spending all his time trying to make a fortress out of his place.” 

“Yeah, but Peter’s denning,” Derek points out.

“Well, at least he probably doesn’t stay up all night waiting for somebody to break in,” Laura snaps.

Derek starts to answer, then stops himself. They’re coming up on Stiles’ dad’s house and he purses his lips, trying to think of a way to point out the obvious without…well, pointing out the obvious, because that’ll just aggravate her.

“Okay, I know, that’s the whole point of denning,” Laura mutters suddenly. She maneuvers the car to the curb and then cuts the engine and flops backward in her seat. “He totally does that, doesn’t he?”

“A couple weeks ago I got up to get something to eat and slipped on plastic he’d put all over the hallway,” Derek says. “There was a mistake in the runes or something on a windowsill and Stiles was going to fix it in the morning, but Peter stayed up to watch that window.”

Laura glances at him. “Plastic? Like in the movies, where the assassin or mob hitman or whatever is ready to roll up the body afterward?”

Derek shrugs. “Our meat freezer isn’t that big.”

“You know, when you moved out, I thought good, things are going to be less weird for you,” Laura says, with a startled, semi-disbelieving laugh. She looks at him a little longer, then reaches over. He thinks she’s going to mess with his hair, but she just puts her hand on his shoulder. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I know I need to chill, but I just—”

“Do you need me to move back?” Derek says, stiffening up. Because it’s just occurred to him that yeah, Laura’s pack _is_ down in numbers, and even if Cora’s still in town, she’s not at the house most of the time, and Laura really is alone in there. And considering how he felt on his own…and she’s an alpha, so it’d be even worse for her. No wonder she’s clinging so tight to the house.

“Derek, you hate this town,” Laura says, looking oddly at him.

He grimaces before he can help himself. “Yeah, but—”

“No,” Laura says firmly. She uses the hand she has on his shoulder to twist him slightly, so he has to look her in the eye. “No. No, you do not need to pity-move back—shut up, that’s completely what that would be. No, okay, you moved out, you needed to, and I just…I do need to get out of the house more. Get a fucking life now that everybody’s grown up, I’m an alpha, not a parent.”

She’s more talking to herself at the end there, repeating something that Peter would occasionally snap at their mother when he thought she was nagging him too much. Of course with their family, as one of the rare borns, all of that alpha stuff gets mixed up with the usual family issues. “It’s not all on you anyway, the rest of the pack’s supposed to pitch in too,” Derek reminds her.

“Oh, yeah, and look, they do, I’m not just wandering around the place by myself all the time,” Laura says. She winces as she talks, avoiding Derek’s gaze a little. “Okay, well, maybe…somebody swings by at least once a week, all right?”

“And now you’ve got the Miskatonic people doing research in the preserve. I’m not saying you should make them pack, I’m just saying they’re there, and Stiles told me his dad told them to respect our claim,” Derek says. He shifts a little as she takes her hand off his shoulder, then puts his head back against the seat and looks at her. “They’re all terrified of Stiles’ dad, you should use that.”

Laura makes a face at him.

“And maybe just let him clean up the place for once. They’re paying for all of that anyway,” Derek adds.

For a second Laura’s going to argue with him. Then she makes another face and pulls away. Looks out the windshield, then shrugs. “Yeah. Yeah, true. I…still don’t know that I want to go hang with omegas right now, but maybe I’ll just go down to the police station, make the sheriff paranoid. Parrish hasn’t been by to scold me lately. Got to keep him in practice.”

Derek looks sharply at his sister, but she doesn’t twitch and her scent doesn’t change at all, so…there probably isn’t anything going on between her and Parrish. Probably. Anyway, if there is—not really Derek’s business till the guy moves in. And he guesses he can always just hit up Cora or Erica for information; Cora does know enough to keep an eye on that, since Derek’s not the only one in the family with a bad track record in romance.

“So the dreams,” Laura says, rolling her head to look at Derek again. “Just…you’re okay, right? That’s really all I want to know, Derek. I swear.”

“I’m.” Then Derek stops. He looks out the windshield and thinks after all the trouble he’s gotten into for trying to not get into trouble for this…he’s just going to waste that effort. “I think they’re sex dreams.”

It’s quiet in the car for a couple minutes. Laura’s scent doesn’t really spike with worry, but it does get flavored with confusion as well as the expected amusement.

“Sex dreams? Like you’ve rediscovered the fact that you’re a young, really good-looking guy who deserves to be happy?” Laura finally says.

Derek scrunches down in the seat till his knees hit the dashboard. Laura’s car isn’t that roomy so he doesn’t manage to scrunch very far. “Stiles and Peter are in them. I’m having sex dreams about them.”

Laura blinks once. Twice. “Oh. Oh…oh.”

“They’re weird,” Derek goes on. It’s not actually easier once he gets started to keep on going, he’s still cringing the same amount, but his mouth keeps moving. “I’m not actually having sex with them, they’re—but they’re definitely sex dreams. About Stiles and Peter. And I know what that means, okay, I just—they’re weird.”

“Okay.” Laura’s still absorbing this. “Okay, weird like…you think they’re lying and you don’t actually want to have sex with them, or weird like—like you do want to have sex with them, but not like _that_.”

“Second one,” Derek says. He goes stiff, listening to himself, and then puts his face in his hand. Because he’s not lying. Or realizing anything new here. He understood the dreams right from the beginning, they weren’t exactly subtle, as that damn Peter-cat had pointed out in the one, but…they had been so damn _weird_.

His sister makes a noncommittal noise. She doesn’t smell disgusted, at least—mostly she smells confused. “Well, is the weird sex part coming from anything you saw—is it at least coming from something in real life? Like, I don’t know, your job? One of the sets you were working on? Or maybe something from Stiles’ research?”

“Maybe,” Derek says. Now that he thinks about it, the graveyard dream and the strange form Stiles had had in it had reminded him a little of a grad student Stiles had introduced him to, saying the guy was one-fourth ghoul. And the dream with Peter had been pretty close to the last horror movie Derek had worked on—Derek straightens up. “Wait, so—”

“Derek, it’s cool to want to have sex with Stiles and Peter,” Laura says, sounding both knowing and exasperated. Then she pauses. “Okay. Look. That’s maybe not the best way to—I wouldn’t personally—I’m trying to say I’m not gonna ostracize you over it, and if that’s your poiso—I mean, if that’s what you want—well, it’s been three months and you all haven’t killed each other, that’s better than some of your exes.”

“Most of them,” Derek mutters.

Laura sighs. “Bro, I wasn’t gonna go there, but…look, the weirdness aside, just remember nobody’s making you deal with _that_ right now, and nobody will be, if I have anything to say about it. So, are you okay?”

It’s a couple minutes before Derek answers, and not because he doesn’t know the answer. He does know. It’s just…kind of a weird answer to be giving, with everything going on right now, but he sits with it and yeah, that’s the answer.

“Close enough,” he tells her.

“Okay, then,” she says. She reaches over again and briefly rubs the back of his neck; he rolls his eyes but then rumbles at her, which makes Laura crack a smile. “All right, look, go chill. We’ll let the Miskatonic people deal with the house, Melissa and Chris are on the hunters, and I’ll just go to Cora’s stupid mixer and at least get some drinks. Which I could use at this point.”

“Make sure Boyd drives you home,” Derek says.

Laura rolls her eyes back at him, then gives his arm a little push. “We’ll be all right, Derek. At least the frogs didn’t eat us.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ithaqua is a Great Old One that mostly appears in northern countries, particularly Canada. In the Cthulhu Mythos, it's the source of the wendigo myth. It is decidedly _not_ Bigfoot, and driving you to insane cannibalism before you freeze to death is pretty much the least it'll do to you. It's where Algernon Blackwood and Lovecraft intersect (Blackwood was a source of inspiration for Lovecraft).
> 
> The electric pentacle is basically a neon sign in the shape of a pentacle and is from William Hope Hodgson's _Carnacki_ series. It repels evil.


	6. Chapter 6

When Derek gets into the house, he can hear one heartbeat upstairs, but before he can call out, Lydia tells him he can still use his bedroom and the upstairs bathroom, but to not disturb any of the string models she’s working on. Derek calls back that he heard her and then doesn’t even try to go upstairs.

He’s hungry anyway, so he heads for the kitchen. Checks his phone and sees he’s got a couple texts from Stiles, one from Scott, and one from Deaton, all basically asking whether he’d arrived yet. He tells them yes and then texts Cora to lay off Laura when she comes back, and he’s sitting down to a hastily-thrown together sandwich with BBQ chips and cheese dip—once Derek pushed the bagged salad mix aside and recognized the fridge drawer’s weird angle led to a hidden compartment, he found the good stuff—when he comes across a text from Peter telling him to check his email.

Derek does, and pulls up a step-by-step list for how to temporarily beef up the wards on his bedroom to keep him from dreaming. The list only has one ‘idiot’ in it.

He looks at it for a little bit. Then he texts Peter a simple thanks, puts his phone aside and takes the food into the living room, figuring he’ll just see what’s on TV.

He dozes off.

He’s not trying. He really isn’t. He even picked something that he’s genuinely interested in, a workplace comedy set in the entertainment industry, and he never watches comedy when other people are around because they spend the whole time talking about how unbelievable it is that Derek has a sense of humor. But he dozes off anyway.

Of course Derek dreams. 

This time he’s indoors, and he recognizes the place: it’s Stiles and Peter’s bedroom. Except…except the dimensions are all wrong, the angles where the ceiling and the walls meet slanting down much more sharply towards Derek than they should be. Everything seems to press down towards him, trying to make him shrink even more into himself than he is, and he finds himself creeping along the wall and then slinking up onto a dresser, trying to stay out of sight.

Stiles and Peter are there. They’re on the bed, and they’re—

Well, they’re fucking.

They look normal. They look like _themselves_ , no tails, no crazed behavior. Peter’s eyes are rolling back in his head and up by the headboard, his hands keep pumping in and out of the pillows as he groans, and that’s a little weird for sex, but it’s not—not something Derek’s never seen Peter do before. It’s just Derek hasn’t seen Peter do the kneading thing during sex, but then, this is the first time Derek’s actually watched Peter having sex. Sure, he’s seen it before, but at the time he was trying to _not_ see it.

Peter shudders, both hands going deep into the stacked-up pillows, and the dim light flicks the beads of sweat shaking off his back. He’s on his belly with Stiles astride him, and Stiles is leaning forward, head bent near Peter’s nape and for a second Derek thinks that he might be biting Peter there. But then Peter jerks his arms in and pushes himself up, then twists half-over, hand catching a pillow and sending it flying off the bed. He and Stiles go over and Derek sees that in fact, Stiles is whispering against Peter’s skin, moving back and forth so that his mouth skims over Peter’s neck from hairline to shoulder.

Stiles has one hand around Peter, not to wrap around Peter’s cock, which is slapping dully back as Peter urgently arches up to meet it, over and over again. No, it’s splayed against Peter’s stomach, with the palm covering the bellybutton and the fingertips digging in so they leave curves of fading red indents along the vee of muscle arrowing towards Peter’s groin. Once, when Peter’s cock hits it, Stiles makes an annoyed noise and snaps two fingers up to knock that away. Peter snarls in response, but it’s a weak, failing noise, more of a protest than a threat, and as Stiles’ knee hikes up against his waist, Peter lets the snarl drag into a groan and reaches down to fist his own cock.

And Derek’s watching. He’s uncomfortable as hell, and has a feeling that when he wakes up, he’ll be lucky if he hasn’t ruined his jeans like he’s a teenager all over again, but he’s watching. Because he’s dreaming, and damn it, fine, he knows now. He knows he’s dreaming, he knows he’s doing it because he’s been living with Stiles and Peter for three months and not only does he want to _stay_ there, he’d like—like _that_ too. That on the bed.

Peter crying out and shaking, head thrown back, throat exposed and belly bent out for anyone’s gutting claw, and not a single care in the world about it. And then, as he slowly slumps back, Stiles wrapping around him, still whispering against his skin. Doing that with the kind of smile, close and affectionate, that makes Derek get why Peter is just lying there and letting Stiles’ hand pet up and down that vulnerable stomach. That makes Derek remember why, despite all the experiences that have taught him what a terrible idea it’d be, he still likes to picture himself with somebody himself at the end of the day.

Sure, he’d like to stay with Stiles and Peter. He thinks he might actually get to, if he can manage to get through a conversation with Peter without losing his temper or making Peter lose his temper. But that’s just about as much as Derek thinks is realistic. Because Peter might care a little more than Derek figured for a nephew who can’t keep out of trouble, but Derek’s under no allusions about where that’s coming from. Landing Stiles has done a lot for Peter’s sense of stability and belonging, and has pretty much nothing to do with Derek.

So Laura might think Derek’s fine to lust after the two of them, but if she thinks Derek actually has any kind of chance…when Derek wakes up, he’s going to have to text her immediately and tell her not to tell Peter. Or even worse, _not_ tell Peter but try and make it happen anyway, out of some screwed-up alpha idea of taking care of her pack even when she can’t physically be there. She’s pulled back a lot on that since they literally left town, but Derek isn’t sure that—

He blink. Then moves over and somehow ends up looking down on things from the headboard, which is a much better view for figuring out what’s going on with Stiles and Peter. Which is—Stiles is still in Peter, doing something that’s got Peter pulling his knees up to his chest with trembling hands, clutching at them and rocking backwards and moaning as Stiles’ cock—Derek can see a little of it where their bodies are joined and it _moves_ —

“It’s actually extremely enjoyable,” Peter says. The cat says. The Peter-cat says. It’s sitting up on the headboard with Derek and smirking. As Derek stares at it, it somehow plumps itself into a round, furry ball on the headboard and then starts purring loudly. Almost as loudly as Peter down on the bed. “ _Extremely_ enjoyable. So don’t start spouting something colored by your narrow horizons, Derek, just because you’ve never—”

“Wait—that—that’s real? I’m not making this up?” Derek says. “I’m supposed to be _dreaming_.”

The Peter-cat stops purring. Then it gets up and twists around to fully look at him, its back slightly arched in a hostile posture. “You think you’re dreaming?”

“Didn’t you ask that before?” Derek says. He glances down at the bed, where Peter and Stiles are still—Stiles has Peter on his belly again and is driving in and out of him, and pulling out enough during that for Derek to see that Stiles’ cock is _definitely_ doing things even a werewolf cock isn’t capable of. Then he looks at the cat. “Yeah, this is one of my weird dreams. I know that. I know this isn’t real.”

“Well, of course it’s not _waking_ reality,” the Peter-cat says. “We’re cats.”

Derek opens his mouth. Then shuts it and holds out his…he’s got a paw. He twists sharply around and surprises the tail that’s apparently attached to his furry ass, right before he loses his balance and has to scramble to keep from falling onto the bed.

“What the _hell_?” Derek hisses. “Why would I dream myself as a cat?”

“Why do you think _you’re_ dreaming?” Peter-cat asks again.

Except this time Derek hears that question slightly differently. As soon as he’s righted himself, he turns on the…the other cat. “Wait. What do _you_ think is going on? This isn’t real but—”

“No, it’s my dream,” Peter-cat says.

Derek looks at him and Peter-cat starts to arch his back again. “You think—you—so the other time. When you—the human you was just going to town on that deer, what, that was your dream too?”

“Why not?” Peter-cat says defensively. “Is the only time it’s permissible to get in touch with my ancestral instincts when Deaton’s decided we should do some ridiculous, completely culturally inappropriate shamanistic ritual?”

“But—but you were covered in deer stomach shit!” Derek says.

“Derek, it’s a _dream_. And it wasn’t that filthy until you appeared and suddenly my lovely moonlit hunt without having to worry about the status of Chris Argent’s hunting permit turned into some psychotic runaway scene from a horror movie,” Peter-cat sniffs, shifting back on its haunches to haughtily lick at its shoulder. “And for that matter, why my dream about that tour of the Arkham cemetery Stiles took me on, which had been a _very_ fond memory involving one particular mausoleum—”

And suddenly, Derek gets it. Everything. He gets everything. It all comes together, and since it’s in a dream, it’s not in that blinding jumble that happens in the waking world, where your stomach tries to heave up at the same time that your mind reels away from the truth. No, it’s just this bright, shining piece of knowledge in his head, just there. Just there and obvious and perfect and he wakes up immediately.

“Ow!” Stiles yelps while falling somewhere to Derek’s left.

“Stiles?” Peter says, pulling his face out of Derek’s neck, the grogginess in his face quickly vanishing in favor of concern.

Then he tries to twist around, but since he and Derek are all knotted up together, he instead ends up tossing Derek into a roll across a grunting Stiles and off the mattress onto the carpet. Mattress. Carpet.

They’re still in Stiles’ dad’s place, and in the living room. At some point somebody unfolded the sofa-bed and moved Derek onto it, and now he’s on the floor by it with a faint scent of Peter’s precome rubbed into one thigh and a little bit of stickiness in his own pants, though it’s not the giant damp spot he was afraid of. Anyway. He’s awake, and more importantly, he still _gets_ it.

“It’s not me,” Derek says, grabbing the edge of the bed and pulling himself up. “I’m not dreaming. It’s not my dream. It’s _your_ dream, and I keep ending up in it, and I’m not trying to do it but I am.”

“What? Wait, what, who’s—Peter’s dreaming?” Stiles says. He sits up and yanks at his hair, making it look even more electro-shocked than it already is. “He’s—you’re getting in his dream. He’s the one with the weird dreams?”

“They’re not weird, they’re perfectly in line with my normal dreams, and I haven’t set off any possession alarms,” Peter says sharply. “Everything’s fine up until—”

“I get in there, and I keep—you want me there. That’s why, right?” Derek goes on, grabbing at the fading clarity of that realization he’d had right at the end. He doesn’t even know how he’s gotten all the pieces together, but he knows that he’s _right_ , knows in the same way that a werewolf always knows what phase of the moon it is, even if they’ve been stuck underground in a hecatolite cave with no calendar. And he knows if he doesn’t finish, he’s going to lose it. “I’m in your dream because you want me there, but when I’m in it, I end up changing it into _my_ dream, and that’s when it all turns into me watching you or Stiles and why are we all sleeping together?”

Peter stares at him. Stiles had been facing Peter, with one hand on Peter’s chest like he’d been trying to soothe the man, but Stiles turns around to stare, too. They’re all still mostly dressed, although somebody took off Derek’s coat and none of them are wearing socks or shoes, and Peter’s swapped into the same shirt he was wearing earlier, just two sizes larger, because when he and Stiles cuddle at night, he can casually have the edge flip up so Stiles can slide one hand under it.

“Um, well, you were really out, and after we checked that it wasn’t a coma or anything nefarious, we figured you were catching up after all the dreams and it was better to let you rest up,” Stiles finally says. He rumples his hair again, his expression slowly shifting from confused to thoughtful. “Lydia’s got stuff all over the upstairs so Peter pulled out the bed and I just redid the wards down here…which would keep away any external influences, but if they’re internal, that wouldn’t be affected…”

“But I don’t know why he’d be in my dream,” Peter says, still smelling edgy. “I’m not doing anything. It’s not a project of mine.”

“Didn’t say it was,” Derek mutters, hearing the way Peter’s starting to get his back up, as if the man thinks he’s being accused of plotting against everybody again. He gets off his knees, grimacing as one pops, and then pulls himself back onto the bed; he feels a little dizzy, for some reason, and he’s going to give himself a couple seconds before he calls it an abnormal reaction and brings it up, too.

Stiles looks back and forth between them. He starts to say something, then stops and abruptly dives over Peter for the corner of the couch. Nearly pitches himself head-first off and Peter grabs him around the waist, stifling a curse, as Stiles hikes himself back up with phone in hand. “Lemme look something up, just a second,” he mutters. “I did block all the external influences, but depending on how you define external…because Cthulhic reality isn’t the only reality where they take the idea of _terroir_ to the nth degree and maybe…just maybe…”

He’s going to be at that for at least a couple minutes, and there’s no point in talking to him till he’s done the research, Derek knows from experience. So Derek checks whether the dizziness is gone, rocking his head from side to side, and when he thinks he’s coming out clear, he turns around to try and find his coat, only to catch Peter staring at him.

It’s a different stare. This isn’t Peter staring at him and trying to figure out whether it’s better to toss Stiles behind the nearest heavy piece of furniture while Peter tackles Derek. This is Peter staring at Derek and trying to figure out whether Derek’s embarrassed himself or embarrassed Peter more, and Derek knows _exactly_ where that’s coming from.

“Fuck,” Derek mutters. He shifts a little off the bed, then catches himself and just takes a deep breath. Because even he knows he can’t just vanish into the dark for a couple weeks, and think that’s going to take care of it. “Okay. Look. They’re…dreams aren’t real, and I know that, and I know it—I wasn’t actually going to—I know Stiles is your mate and—”

“Huh?” Stiles says, head swinging back up. He looks at Derek, then, sensing something, slews around to look at Peter. Who wasn’t really doing anything, but who twitches with as close to a guilty look as Derek’s ever seen on the man’s face. Stiles promptly drops his phone and prods Peter in the chest. “Wait a second. I know that look. That’s the look of I almost had something I actually kind of really want, and I didn’t tell you about it because I think you’re going to be weird about it and I want to be a _perfect_ , spotless, sterling silver mate when for the love of the Elder Gods, I fell for you _because_ you’re an unrepentantly selfish asshole werewolf who thinks really tight clothes is going to make me miss all of that.”

Somehow, Peter manages to look both as if Stiles has done the most spectacular, amazing feat of shady academic whatever, and as if he really, really wishes they could just go blackmail somebody else. “I’m not sure what you mean,” Peter says.

“Yeah. Sure. Derek said the dreams had us in them, and before you two woke up, you were grinding on each other and making the kind of noises where I was seriously considering setting that taser Dad got me to mild tingle because I was worried it was going into territory that requires waking consent and oh, my _God_.” Stiles’ eyes go round and wide. “Were these sex dreams? Is that why they were weird, Derek? Sex dreams? Group sex? Were we having sex?”

Derek rubs his hand over his face. “They weren’t real, it was just a dream.”

“It _was_ sex!” Then Stiles sits back. He frowns and fidgets with his phone, while behind his shoulder, Peter gets that tense look Derek recognizes from whenever Peter decides Stiles is going to be mad at him and is thinking of preemptively doing something that’ll piss Stiles off so it’ll be about that than about the other thing. “Um, Derek, you know…listen, um, I’m totally not judging your life choices, I mean, I’m a guy who has researched life-forms who have reproductive cycles in four different dimensions, but sex isn’t…it’s…it’s a natural thing, and—”

“I’ve had sex before,” Derek says, blinking. He watches as Stiles blows out a breath of relief and then looks even more embarrassed than before. “That wasn’t the weird part—I’m not weirded out by just sex.”

“It…wasn’t… _just_ sex, to be honest,” Peter starts, while darting the occasional shifty look at Stiles. Then he catches Derek’s eye and for a second it almost seems as if he’s hesitating to see if Derek wants to jump in. “It was a little…I didn’t realize I was actually speaking to _Derek_ , when he came in. That was unusual.”

Derek frowns. “Wait, so what did you think was going on? Who did you think I really was?”

“I didn’t think you were anything or anyone at all, except a figment of my subconscious,” Peter says. He’s starting to sound a little offended. “If I’d had the slightest idea we were dream-sharing, or that a second conscious mind was at all involved, obviously I would’ve spoken up and—”

“But you were acting just like it was me, so…what, you dream about me being annoying to you?” Derek says, still trying to work it all out. Because if it hasn’t just been him with the weird dreams, and it’d actually been Peter’s dream all along, then—even if Derek being there had changed it, that still meant…“You dream about me watching you and Stiles do things? And being annoying about it? None of that seemed out of place to you?”

“Well, it’s not exactly that far off real life, and dreams sometimes do echo reality,” Peter says huffily.

He’s covering up. He’s suddenly realized exactly what Derek’s realized, which is that they’ve gotten off Derek and onto him and Stiles is way, way too sharp to miss that. Actually, Stiles had already started in on it, only for the conversation to drift off, and Stiles isn’t going to let that happen twice.

“Okay, I think I’m getting it now,” Stiles says, as he scoots back so that he can look at both of them at once. “You two are cross-dreaming, and nobody realized it because sub-subconsciously, you were both kind of okay with it and you were because in Dreamland you can try out stuff you wouldn’t normally do and…this all means you wanna try being in each other’s lives more?”

“But you two are together. I mean, Peter’s looking into den-proofing,” Derek says. “I know—”

“Look, okay, can you guys first just _say_ what it is you want?” Stiles suddenly snaps. He’s sharp enough about it that Peter’s head dips before Peter catches himself. “I mean, just so we know exactly what it is we’re nixing? Because I don’t know if it’s because of the super-senses or what, but you never just say it and instead you go off and throw yourself into sentient hostile houses or pretend you aren’t worried about being possessed and that’s not actually a language! Stupid heroics isn’t a valid method of communication, and I had to learn three forbidden tongues just for my first-year Intro to Esoteric Folklore, so I should know, okay?”

Derek almost points out that they all know Scott, but the last remnants of his self-preservation stop him. Instead he looks at Peter, who blinks in surprise and then looks irritated, in that way Peter has when Peter thinks Derek’s trying to make him make a call he’s not actually responsible for making.

“And the side-looks about whose turn it is to duck out and rip a shirt or whatever, I see those, and let me tell you, I am _not_ impressed,” Stiles goes on. He doesn’t even wait for them to wince, but just keeps rolling. “I’ve been doing my best to learn all this pack dynamic stuff from scratch and to just respect your social structure, but I am _this_ close to calling bullshit on all of it and just saying it’s about you being terrified that I’ll maul you if I say something, and I’m not that guy! I’m not even capable of that, okay, I have a whole _one_ physical anomaly and it’s not any good outside of the bedroom and—”

“So that’s not made up, the wiggly cock thing,” Derek’s mouth says, for some reason.

“—I just study Yog-Sothoth, I’m not actually him, and…yeah, yeah, okay, it, um, it has some extra muscular range, for real, not just in Dreamland,” Stiles says, rapidly deflating from frustrated ranting to sheepish rubbing at his nose. He shrugs awkwardly. “So, um…you…you know this how…”

“It was in Peter’s dream,” Derek fills in.

“Well, why not? It’s something to dream about,” Peter says, with a touch of lofty sarcasm. But just a touch, when normally he’d be licking each word with it, and when Stiles twists to look at him, he immediately backs off instead of doubling down on the attempt to change the subject. “I wasn’t trying to hide it, really. It’s just…if Derek wasn’t even sure about settling in, and it did seem like—”

“I thought you didn’t want me to get that close,” Derek says, before Stiles can bring up that he’d yelled at Derek about that earlier. “You’re denning.”

Peter looks exasperated again. “That doesn’t mean I’m automatically excluding everyone from the place. Just the undesirables, and damn it, Derek, we invited you to come along when we moved coasts.”

“Yeah, I know, and—okay, so I missed that part. Where you weren’t just letting me do it because I asked,” Derek says. “But that’s still not really the same as sharing.”

“And…this right here, this is a vast improvement over the passive-aggressive pining, but we _still_ aren’t really saying what it is we want,” Stiles says with a sigh. He rubs his head as if he’s starting to get a headache. “Look, for the record, as far as I’m concerned, I reserve the right to not go along with it, but that’s not the same as pitching a fit over it and as long as you aren’t saying we should all become Cthulhu cultists, I won’t. I really won’t. I mean, Peter, I told you—you weren’t there for this, Derek, but it’s still true—I told you I went into this knowing you guys are werewolves, and a werewolf’s what I want.”

“Being a werewolf doesn’t automatically mean group sex,” Derek has to point out.

Stiles narrows his eyes at Derek. “No, of course not, stereotypes are bad, but also, are you _sure_ that isn’t actually what we’re talking about?”

It’s quiet for a few seconds. The last couple seconds before Derek potentially screws up the least potentially fatal, least lonely, and potentially the most stable living arrangement he’s had since the majority of his family burned to death.

“Possibly, but only if both of you are amenable,” Peter says, suddenly but very softly. He’s mostly looking towards Stiles, but every so often his eyes flick to Derek. “Dreams are all well and good, but I’ve long since learned the folly of relying on them, and—Stiles, having what I like is desirable, but having what’s important to me is more critical by definition. And I’d much rather have you happy, and Derek—Derek at least not self-destructing, than…”

“Well, that wasn’t as hard as getting the glottal stops on Valusian right, was it?” Stiles says, smiling up at Peter. His hand might sneak out to brush against Peter’s belly, too; Stiles’ body is in the way so Derek can’t confirm, but Peter twitches in a very specific way whenever Stiles is groping that.

Peter’s shoulders drop slightly in relief and his scent floods with that, plus an affection Derek really has never seen Peter show anybody else, and those two are just going to roll off into their usual bubble.

So Derek starts to get up, and that’s when both of them swivel around towards him. He stops, then has to force himself to not curl his lip at the glint in Peter’s eye. The sudden curiosity in Stiles’ face, on the other hand—and one that’s completely free of hostility or anything that else that should make Derek feel uneasy, which is why he ends up being even more suspicious of it—that he’s not quite sure how to react to.

“You said you don’t even know me that well,” Derek finally says, when it’s clear that neither of the other two are going to say anything.

Stiles cocks his head. “No, but…do you _wanna_ get to know me? I mean, it’s not like Peter and I just fell into bed either, we had a whole dating period first—”

Peter’s face twitches.

Stiles isn’t even facing Peter, he’s completely turned around to look at Derek, and he still senses it. Werewolf or not, he’s definitely mated. “Oh, shut up, you actually did buy me three separate meals and we had a whole Cthulhic infestation to put down before we got around to the sex. Not that you didn’t try really, really hard to get it sooner, okay, I’ll credit you with that, but…getting away from the point, which is, Derek, I’m admittedly way more okay with Peter’s obsessive need to surround me with unnecessary security than I should be, _but_ that means I am also fully researched-up and open to the idea of alternative pack structures.”

“Group sex also doesn’t mean the pack hierarchy changes,” Derek says. “It’s not like it’s automatically a three-way mating.”

“Okay, I know, I’m just—look, can you put aside the passive-aggressive factual nitpicking and work with me a little here?” Stiles says. He even pushes out on his hands and knees so he can poke his finger into Derek’s arm. “I’m open to it. At the very least, okay, I’m open to friend-dating, so at least you can stop feeling like you have to squat in a bedroom that’s actually yours and not just our guest room.”

“But where would you put—I’m not always—” Derek starts.

Stiles rolls his eyes. “Couch-bed. We have one. Like I said, you’re a werewolf, you want your own territory even in pack areas, well, we’ve been totally respecting that even if you haven’t been taking advantage, and that’s what I’m saying. Take advantage.”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” Peter says, with a quick warning look at Derek before Stiles can catch him. “But yes, there are some benefits you aren’t using.”

Derek…would say he’s dreaming, because basically, he’s being told he can have exactly what he wants. Except that’s not his dreams work, so clearly, he’s not dreaming. And yeah, he’s aware of just how screwed up it is that he can tell reality from not by whether he’s potentially up for something good. Although that doesn’t mean he believes in it.

On the other hand, honestly, he’s tired of getting the short end of the stick. He’s not actually a goddamn masochist, he just has had to learn to put up with terrible things happening to him and to move on, and—yeah, he wants this. Yeah, he can’t believe it’s real. But yeah, okay, that’s not actually a good reason to not try it. Worst comes to worst, it’s not like he’ll be surprised.

“Okay,” Derek says, and then shifts back as Peter blinks once before grinning with an aggressive number of teeth showing. “Wait, that’s not ‘okay’ to—”

“It’s okay to the dating and get-to-know you thing, right?” Stiles breaks in, while reaching back—again without looking—and up and grabbing Peter by the back of the neck. Which Peter looks entirely too comfortable about to really reassure Derek. “Look, the three meals thing, obviously, if you want more, that’s cool, and definitely the Cthulhic incursion isn’t mandatory, and just whatever you’re okay with.”

“Yeah,” Derek says after a long pause. “Yeah. The getting-to-know-you thing, okay. I’ll…I’ll use my part of the meat freezer.”

Which is a dumb thing to say, but look, being a werewolf doesn’t actually come with lessons on how to gracefully accept an offer to start a threesome with a mated pair. It’s just the first thing Derek thinks of since he fell asleep without finishing off his food and now he’s realizing he’s still hungry, and at any rate, Stiles looks genuinely happy about it. “Sure!” he chirps. “And I can tweak the settings for your side if you want, I know Peter likes to change the humidity depending on if he’s dry-aging for food or for spellwork and—”

“If you’re all done with the relationship negotiations,” Lydia announces from the edge of the room. She stands there, arms folded over her chest, while they fall over each other—or in Peter’s case, damn near full-shift while crouched over Stiles—and then right themselves. “I have results. I know why the frogs are here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Weird angles" in the Cthulhu Mythos allow you to do nifty stuff like teleport. Or, in John's case, to hide junk food from your son. See Lovecraft's _Dreams in the Witch-House_.
> 
> So, the whole cultural appropriation debate aside, I find TW is just plain illogical in how it makes a _druid_ , which is a Celtic concept, borrow a whole bunch of stuff from unrelated cultures. I mean, South American lizard monsters? And the werewolf origin story in particular that referenced the Titans, the Greeks and Romans thought Celts were barbarians and the Romans at one point did their damnedest to wipe out that culture.
> 
> Valusian is from Robert E. Howard's _Conan the Barbarian_ stories, which are connected to the Cthulhu Mythos. Howard and Lovecraft were friends.


	7. Chapter 7

Derek has no idea what he’s looking at.

He’s had some dreams where he’s thought the same thing, as well as seeing some things in Beacon Hills that deserved that statement, but this is a whole new level of not understanding what he’s looking out.

“Um,” Stiles finally says, and when Derek looks over, he catches the man with a rare expression of complete confusion on his face. Stiles doesn’t know everything, but he normally at least has a general idea of what’s going on or not going on. But right now, he looks like he doesn’t even know what question to ask. “Okay. Lyds. This is…this is…”

“This is very impressive,” Peter says in a dry, dubious tone. He reaches out and pops a claw, almost touching it to one of the hundreds of strings criss-crossing the hallway. Then he quickly withdraws his hand, flicking a smug smile towards Lydia, who’d looked as if she was ready to scream him into not disturbing her…

“Oh, honestly, as if you’ve never resorted to string theory,” Lydia says, starting her glare at Peter and then moving it to Stiles. “We were downgraded on processing priority because of some idiot back on the East Coast who wants to play with lasers and the Shining Trapezohedron, so I had to improvise.”

“I thought that was a physics thing,” Derek mutters to Peter. “Like one of those invisible forces things, that you don’t see.” 

Peter visibly suppresses a sigh, absently twisting at the afghan draped around his waist. “It _is_ a physics thing, but in that realm there are a few concepts with identical names but vastly different outcomes when it comes to the Cthulhic dimensions.”

“Anyway, okay, so long as this is all coming down before Dad gets back and it doesn’t leave behind any accidental mutagenic extradimensional zones,” Stiles says, sounding annoyed. He waves at Peter and Derek to stay back but goes up next to Lydia and starts to pick and tug at various pieces of string. “So what’s the deal, why are the frogs…oh.”

Lydia sniffs triumphantly, while Stiles stoops down, hands on knees, and examines a whorl of string that’s the size of Derek’s head. Actually, they both look at it.

“No, Derek, I have no idea,” Peter mutters in an exasperated tone.

Derek wasn’t even looking at him. But before Derek can say so, Lydia rolls her eyes and shoots them both a contemptuous glance. “The Nemeton has preexisting connections with the local wildlife and now it’s undergoing rapid adaptive behavioral mutagenesis, most probably based on the more advanced forms of Cthulhic—”

“It sent the frogs to get everybody out of your house so they could eat the hunters, because it’s kind of attached to the idea of local werewolves,” Stiles says. He’s still peering at the knot. “I don’t _think_ it’s on the level of cult formation, it doesn’t seem like it’s gonna demand anything from you guys except that at least some of you stick around, but…yeah. I gotta check some things, but I’m starting to think it deliberately kept us from knowing about the hunters because it wanted to handle them itself.”

“So the Nemeton protected the house, that’s what you’re saying,” Peter says, so interested that he forgets himself and steps forward, only to start when Lydia hisses sharply at him. He makes a face at her and steps back, then stumbles a little as part of the afghan catches under his foot. When he straightens up, the afghan’s slid down to show half his left hipbone. “The Nemeton _wants_ werewolves in the preserve.”

“If I had to guess, I’d say it considers having a pack around to be an extension of its territory, but we should confirm that. Which shouldn’t be too hard, let me just see if Scott’s around,” Stiles says, taking out his phone. He backs up and then turns around while texting. “Okay, cool, he is, he’ll be right over, and again, pretty sure this is no-strings-attached, it’s not like the Nemeton’s doing this to convince you to be willing homicidal servants, it’s _pseudo-Cthulhic_ , not true Cthulhic and we’re still not detecting any psychic interference.”

Lydia clears her throat. When Stiles looks up, frowning, she nods at another knot and she and Stiles go down the hall a little bit, carefully maneuvering around and in between strings, and start slinging around words like ‘astral-magnetic waves’ and ‘parabolic temporal curves’ and ‘Carter displacements.’ Derek settles back to wait for them to finish, only to catch Peter looking oddly at him.

“What?” he says.

Peter looks at him a little longer, then sighs and reaches over and pulls the phone from Derek’s back pocket. “Very well, _I’ll_ tell your sister.”

“Oh—look, I’ll text her that it’s cool, we’re maybe all collectively under mind-control but it’s okay because the homicidal tree is on our side this time,” Derek says, snatching back his phone. He unlocks it and starts the text and then glowers up at Peter. “I just figured we should hear the whole thing before we freak her out, okay? You know she’s going to be weird about this.”

“I don’t think she’ll be _weird_ about it. Feel a little dispossessed, yes, but that’s the plight of the alpha, you’re never quite as in control as you should be,” Peter says with a shrug. He absently scratches at his belly, glances over his shoulder as Stiles yelps excitedly about something, and then looks back at Derek. “Laura’s a pragmatist, she’ll understand the defensive value, and since it’s looking increasingly unlikely that she’ll ever be pried out of this town, it’ll cost very little. For once.”

“I still think we should wait till we figure out the mind-invasion part,” Derek mutters. “For all we know, this explains why I ended up in your dream, too.”

“Perhaps the second time, but not the first, since we were still in our own place at the time,” Peter says. “I’m rather inclined to think it was simply proximity, and while I genuinely _wasn’t_ intentionally drawing you in, I have been exploring Dreamland more actively.”

Derek blinks hard. He starts to reply, then stops himself because Peter’s looking at him very closely. Acting casual about it, but that’s Peter for you, always standing around with a vaguely superior smile on his face while he pretends he’s not ready and waiting for the second you give him a reason to pounce on you. Peter said it the way he did on purpose.

And it still…feels weird to Derek, to try and think as if he’s actually going to…be at home or something. But weird is just how his life is, and at least with this one, he does want to see whether it’ll work out. “Why a cat?” he asks instead.

Because that had been bugging him, and frankly, that is genuinely weird. Enough so that Peter really has no right to be pulling his Derek-it’s-obvious face. “Well, why not?” Peter asks back. “I can see the world through the eyes of a wolf whenever I want, after all. There’s nothing new about that, and if the proper precautions are taken, using Dreamland as a place to experiment with other forms is perfectly safe. Not to mention that cats are particularly privileged in that plane.”

“Okay,” Derek says slowly, since he knows Stiles references ‘Dreamland’ from time to time, but doesn’t actually have any idea what Peter’s talking about. “Right. Anyway, so now that we know what’s going on, and if you know how it all works, you’re going to…make it stop?”

“You don’t seem all that certain that you want it to stop. Now that we know,” Peter says, his brow up, a faintly—the weird thing is, he’s poking at Derek, but it’s a lot less nasty than he usually does it. And he’s leaning in, a lot farther than he needs to, with his shoulders not spread out as if they would if he was challenging, and then Derek gets a whiff of his scent and…then it goes annoyed. “I can see it’s just as well Stiles is happy to make this a structured process.”

“Well, you only started flirting with me as of two seconds ago!” Derek snaps. Peter pulls back, ruffled, and a zing of disappointment cuts across Derek’s irritation and it’s just—this is all still so weird. He honestly doesn’t know what to do with it, that’s why he drops back into his usual attitude. “My whole _life_ you’ve called me an idiot and then I’m supposed to not notice when you flip it?”

“Besides, you kind of should get dressed, people are coming over,” Stiles says, coming up behind Peter. He pauses and grabs the afghan, and then snorts as Peter promptly pivots around, turning that attempt to yank up the afghan into Stiles winding his arm around Peter’s waist, with the blanket sliding even lower. “Seriously, Peter? Yeah, okay, you ripped up your clothes defending me from the terrifying Lydia but this is _literally always your excuse_.”

Peter looks unconvincingly apologetic. “But Stiles, she _is_ terrifying. She’d be offended if I claimed anything less. And anyway, my luggage is still in the bedroom, which is behind a fully-functional model of a tesseract, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Such flattery, how can I resist,” Lydia says dryly, while reaching out and tugging a string so that a huge portion of the web suddenly unravels.

Peter glares at her. She tosses her hair over one shoulder and strides down the hallway towards the stairs while Stiles looks admiringly after her. Then shakes his head, checks Peter—who’s noticed and is now glaring at Lydia with glowing eyes—sighs and starts edging Peter along towards the now-unblocked doorway to the room he and Peter had been using. Still trying to pull up that blanket, though his eyes are dropping for longer and longer to Peter’s belly.

Derek stands back and watches them. Which is usually what he does, standing around and watching and waiting, since once they get into that bedroom, it could be anywhere from a few minutes to whenever Scott or whoever shows up and startles them before they come out. 

“Ugh, look, we are _not_ having sex, Peter, I have Scott and his mom and my dad all heading over, and I bet Laura’s going to show up too,” Stiles mutters, ineffectually prodding at Peter’s chest. His finger keeps slipping down towards Peter’s stomach, mostly because of how Peter is sidling up to him. Then he shakes himself hard and looks towards Derek. “Hey, you have any suggestions here?”

That sometimes happens too, Stiles throwing out a question to Derek, and it doesn’t change what Derek does. Except—Derek finds himself with a foot off the ground before he realizes what he’s doing, and then, when he does…he takes that step.

He’s not dreaming, and he’s not playing around. It’s real and he means it. And…okay, he thinks. “About not sleeping with him?”

“Well, I mean, you managed to not do that up till now, right?” Stiles grunts. Both of his hands are now on Peter’s chest, although he still has them positioned like he’s trying to keep some space in between them.

“Depending on your definition of sleeping, I suppose,” Peter purrs, grinning down at Stiles. And he doesn’t at all smell irritated when Derek edges after them; if anything, he’s even more amused. “Technically, we were all just a few minutes ago—”

“That’s because pack cuddles subconsciously reassure people! That was all that was about!” Stiles yelps, switching between eyeing Peter and looking a little nervously over Peter’s shoulder at Derek. “Derek was upset, you said you could still smell it on him!”

“Because I _could_ ,” Peter says, still drawling with a smile on his face. “And now I can smell—”

“Look, we’re not having sex right now,” Derek says, following them. Because they aren’t. However convincing Peter is, it’s not going to be enough to get Derek over how weird this all still feels, before they even get to the chance of important people like Stiles’ father catching them.

But, Derek is seriously starting to think, they really might do that. Soon.

* * *

Stiles’ idea about double-checking on the Nemeton turns out to consist of getting all the werewolves in town to assemble in the now-drained basement of Derek’s family’s house, including Scott, and doing some sort of séance. Except instead of contacting dead people, they contact the Nemeton, and instead of some medium jerking and twitching while going on about the afterlife and how peaceful or horrifying it is, Scott’s pet squirrel suddenly jumps off his shoulder into the center of them all, where it floats in the air with all of its tail-tentacles bushed out, a glowing-green halo around it, and talks to them in a really deep baritone voice.

 _“There have always been werewolves here,”_ it says. _“There should be werewolves here. The werewolves shall not be killed.”_

Chris looks a little bit twitchy at that, even after Melissa slings a protective arm over his shoulders and Stiles’ dad mutters something about never mind, Miskatonic can ship in some wendigo-strength catch-and-release traps for the psychos.

“Cool,” Cora says before anybody else can. “But do we all have to stay all the time? Because Erica and Boyd and I are doing this party next weekend two towns over, and we kind of need the money.”

“Cora, seriously?” Laura says.

The squirrel twitches a little and Scott bites his lip and aborts his attempt to hold out his hands under it, even though it’s nowhere near falling. _“Werewolves may come and go but we want a pack to stay.”_

“Okay, that sounds like…it’s not on individuals,” Laura says. She sounds a little uncertain, but overall she’s taking this a lot better than Derek would’ve thought. “Okay. Okay, good, because I’d have issues with that, and…I agree that werewolves shouldn’t be killed either, but we’re not going to be hostages or mind-controlled slaves. We’ll just—we’re living with each other, right? Like neighbors.”

 _“Neighbors,”_ the squirrel says, with an eerily human nod. 

“Well, that’s good,” Scott says, looking relieved. “Neighbors are good. They help each other out, and I think that’s a good way to think about it. Let’s be neighbors.”

The squirrel bobs in the air a little. _“We like Scott,”_ it announces, just before the glow suddenly vanishes and the squirrel drops like a rock.

Scott darts forward and grabs it, and it stares up from his cupped hands, blinking and sort of swaying and generally looking as woozy as a squirrel with tentacles can. When Stiles grins and slaps Scott on the back, Scott automatically clutches the squirrel to his chest and it makes a muffled squeaking noise.

“Seal of approval, Scotty, even the local nature entities like you,” Stiles says. “Also, Dad, when the ecology department hears about this, they are _so_ going to get you that budget increase for year two.”

“I wouldn’t take it personally,” Peter says, and when Derek looks over, he’s only mildly surprised to see that Peter’s speaking to Laura. “It’s a vegetal mind that thinks it’s a transdimensional cephalopod, who knows what passes for taste in its consciousness.”

“I think I’m okay with it. He can have tentacle duty, I’ve got the pack to look after,” Laura shrugs. “Especially if Derek’s moving in with you two for good, we should start recruiting again.”

Cora perks up. “So he’s taking his stuff?”

“That still doesn’t mean you get my room,” Derek says, annoyed. Then he turns to his other sister. “Give it to somebody who won’t let Erica snitch their clothes.”

Cora snarls at him. Laura grins at Derek and her, showing her fangs, and Peter looks like he’s rethinking having any connection with any of them. Though when they start to clear out of the basement, he waits for Derek—mostly so he can give Derek an alpha-ish jerk of the chin to get up and out of the way so he can go retrieve Stiles, who is now babbling about research expansion plans with his nursing-a-migraine father. But still.

So Derek feels entirely justified about taking the last piece of marble pound cake from the spread the Miskatonic research team has set up in the living room, even though Peter loves marble pound cake. Peter needs to get Stiles out of the house before Stiles talks his way into managing that research expansion, he doesn’t need to be distracted. And now that Derek’s had a few hours to sit with it and think through it, he figures that if he’s really going to do this, he should get involved with the rest, too. It’s not just about the sex—if it had been, he probably would’ve been just fine with the dreams.

Anyway, Derek likes marble pound cake too. So for once, he has some.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Shining Trapezohedron is one of those MacGuffins, except this one opens a portal to a sanity-devouring god once you find it. See Lovecraft's _The Haunter of the Dark_.
> 
> The idea of mashing string modeling with Cthulhu stuff came from Piers Beckley's _Universal Constants._


	8. Epilogue

After Laura and Melissa and Stiles’ dad work out a couple house rules for how the newly-interventionist Nemeton is going to handle things like invading hunters, life…involves less dead bodies. It doesn’t settle down, it’s Beacon Hills, but the homicide rate drops enough that Stiles and Peter and Derek can go back to their place, where Peter makes a couple adjustments so whatever he’s doing as a cat in Dreamland, he doesn’t drag Derek into it. In hindsight, the dreams weren’t bad, but there are a lot of other changes and Derek just wants to be able to adjust to one thing at a time. 

“Besides, cats have hairballs,” Derek mutters, trying to dig his light meter out of his pocket without losing the camera angle. “We’ve already got vomit samples sitting in the cooler on this trip, do you really want to add to that?”

Peter sighs heavily. Right down the back of Derek’s shirt, because he’s doing exactly what Derek told him not to do and screwing with the shot, and he makes it even worse by grabbing Derek’s hips when Derek starts, pulling them both back so now Derek’s not only got to fix the light settings, he’ll have to figure out all over again how to shoot around that very modern, not-Victorian central-air piping.

“Derek, the whole point of a dream is to avoid the inconvenient aspects of reality,” Peter mutters. While his fingers squeeze into Derek’s pocket and take out the light meter just as Derek’s got his hand on it. To Derek it feels like the meter’s slipping out and he curses and grabs at it, only to nearly bang the camera into a wooden beam as Peter sighs again, hauls him back, and just coincidentally feels up his ass at the same time. “I’m only pointing out that now that you seem a little more reconciled to having an imagination, you might want to undergo some training so that you know how to—”

“Are you having sex back there?” Stiles snaps, stomping back into view. He’s got cobwebs thickly layered over one of the hands he’s waving irritably at them, streaks of the gritty black dust that’s all over the place through his hair and on his clothes, and his phone is giving off a purple glow. “I told you, this is _not_ going to be a porno, I really don’t care how much the tentacle-sex fetishists are offering, this is _field research_.”

Peter makes an indignant noise. “Stiles, why on earth would I even be interested in selling our intimate moments to outsiders?”

“Well, you’re not making sex tapes for personal use either,” Stiles goes on. He rolls his eyes when Peter doesn’t say anything to _that_. Then his phone blips and he frowns and lowers it to have a look. “Look, Derek can’t edit till we get back to the hotel room and we’re supposed to have this how-to on liches up on the course site by noon tomorrow, or else Professor Waite’s going to call me up, and we’re only running this late to begin with because _you_ wanted to have cemetery sex again.”

The whole time that Stiles is scolding Peter, his phone is making those blipping noises with increasing frequency. Derek twists sharply and gets out of Peter’s grip—his jeans hike downwards, letting an unpleasantly chilly breeze tickle the tops of his buttocks—just in time to get the camera back up and around so he can catch the thing coming around the corner behind Stiles.

Peter roars and then blurs by Derek, who frantically scrolls settings before semi-accidentally finding the right combination just before Peter’s claws gut the lich. He’ll have to get creative about cropping and cutting, but at least he’s got the lighting right, and as he steps around Stiles to film the close-ups, he even manages to get a nice shot of the vaguely screaming-face-shaped haze drifting up from the tussle.

Of course, then somebody yanks at his jeans. He grunts and digs in his heels, and thinks he might just keep the stutter to something that the Steadicam frame can deal with. “Hey.”

“Sorry, wasn’t trying to knock you over, you were, um, just kind of hanging out a bit,” Stiles says sheepishly. He gives Derek’s re-covered hip a nervous pat, then makes another embarrassed face as he yanks back his hand. Jiggles in place for a second, then sidles up to peer at the viewer with Derek. “So, you get it?”

“Think so,” Derek mutters, tilting the camera as Peter gratuitously pries open the ribcage. “You’re getting it all over.”

Peter’s nose wrinkles at he looks down at himself. Then he sighs and pushes back onto his heels. He gives the re-dead lich a flick with his fingers, then starts taking off his shirt. “Just as well I always bring at least two spares,” he says.

“Okay, stop filming,” Stiles says, back to exasperated, as he tugs at Derek’s elbow. “First, I totally know which sizes those spares are, and second, these videos are supposed to give my freshmen a realistic idea of what to expect when they hit their lab final, _not_ to make them think all grad students get sexy werewolf assistants. I mean, you’re not even on payroll, how do you even get _nominated_ as Hottest Supernatural TA? Let alone win?”

“I don’t know, Stiles, I learned about it when you did,” Peter says, while standing up and stretching his arms over his head and flexing off a lot of dust. “Although it was very thoughtful of them to make the prize a clear hazmat suit. Perhaps we should regroup in the parking lot and see if that works, since we need to deal with my clothing situation anyway?”

Derek catches himself thinking about filters for getting rid of the dust interference, then just shuts off the camera and pops on the lens cap. He and Stiles have sealed it up tight against any particulate contamination, so he’s not worried about any of the dust getting in and messing with the insides and forfeiting his rental deposit. He’s just pretty sure there’s no point in trying right now. Like he keeps telling Peter, he knows what he’s not good at, and multi-tasking is not his strong suit.

One thing at a time, he figures, as Stiles huffs and grabs Peter’s arm and starts dragging them all out of the basement. Just one thing at a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Liches are the Cthulhu Mythos' version of zombies - they're generally not flesh-craving, mindless monsters, but reanimated corpses with just as much intelligence, if not more, than when they were alive. They also tend to be a lot less durable than your traditional zombie.
> 
> So they all lived happily ever after, having hot threesomes in ridiculous locations, while making videos so Stiles could drag the mandatory freshman courses he has to TA into the proper century with high-definition audiovisual resources. Yes, Derek finally got comfortable with the sex, although that may have to wait for a future installment. With where he was, just didn't seem realistic to shoehorn in a scene, although frankly, I think his dreams got plenty graphic enough to justify the rating.


End file.
